KNIGHT 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 


MIND  AND   HEALTH    SERIES 

Edited  by  H.  Addington  Bruce,  A.M. 


SLEEP  AND 
SLEEPLESSNESS 

BY 
H.  ADDINGTON  BRUCE 

AUTHOR   OF    "  SCIENTIFIC   MENTAL   HEALING," 
"  THE   RIDDLE   OF   PERSONALITY,"    ETC. 


BOSTON 
LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND  COMPANY 

1920 


Copyright,  1915, 
BT  LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND  COMPANY. 


All  rights  reserved 


PREFACE 

A  STUDY  of  sleep  falls  naturally 
and  inevitably  into  the  scheme  of 
the  present  series  of  handbooks, 
the  purpose  of  which  is  to  extend  knowl- 
edge of  the  important  discoveries  affecting 
individual  and  social  welfare  that  have 
been  made  during  recent  years  through 
psychological  investigation.  Perhaps  in  no 
respect  have  the  labors  of  modern  psychol- 
ogists —  and  particularly  of  medical  psy- 
chologists—  been  more  fruitful  than  in  the 
light  they  have  thrown  on  the  phenomena 
of  sleep.  The  nature  of  sleep  itself  has  for 
the  first  time  been  experimentally  as  well  as 
clinically  studied,  with  results  of  great  prac- 
tical significance.  The  causes  of  sleepless- 
ness have  likewise  been  investigated  more 
carefully  than  ever  before,  and  discoveries 


2217815 


PREFACE 

made  that  bring  new  hope  to  the  victim 
of  insomnia.  As  later  stated,  evidence  is 
now  available  indicating  that  almost  all 
insomnia  is  curable,  and  curable  without 
recourse  to  drugs. 

So,  too,  those  common  disorders  of  sleep 
—  nightmare  and  somnambulism  —  have 
been  scrutinized  anew,  and  important  con- 
clusions reached  as  to  their  nature,  causa- 
tion, and  proper  treatment.  No  less  ex- 
haustive and  painstaking  have  been  the 
researches  of  the  modern  psychologists  with 
regard  to  the  general  problem  of  the  state 
of  the  mind  in  sleep,  one  result  being  the 
gaining  of  unexpected  insight  into  the  true 
significance  of  dreams.  On  the  one  hand 
they  have  been  found  to  be,  not  mere  hap- 
hazard products  of  the  imagination,  but 
mental  images  mirroring  the  inner  life  of 
the  dreamer ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  sci- 
entific study  of  them  has  revealed  unsus- 
pected mental  processes  and  powers  as  part 
of  the  common  possession  of  mankind. 

vi 


PREFACE 

It  has  been  my  effort  to  present  the 
results  of  all  this  varied  investigation  as 
compactly  and  clearly  as  possible ;  and  in 
especial  to  make  the  presentation  of  prac- 
tical helpfulness  to  the  reader.  To  none 
of  us  are  sleep  and  its  phenomena  of  merely 
academic  interest;  they  press  upon  us  ur- 
gently, and  the  better  we  understand  them 
the  happier,  healthier,  and  more  efficient 
lives  we  can  lead. 

H.  ADDINGTON  BRUCB. 

CAMBRIDGE,  MASSACHUSETTS, 
March,  1915. 


Vll 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTEB 

PAGE 

V 

1 

II.    THE  MIND  IN  SLEEP 

.       37 

III.     DREAMS  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL  . 

.       66 

IV.    DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

.     114 

V.    THE  CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS    . 

.     146 

VI.    THE  TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

.     178 

INDEX      

.     217 

SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

CHAPTER  I 

«. 
Why  We  Sleep 

\ 

SLEEP  has  long  been  regarded  as 
one  of  the  most  baffling  of  the 
many  knotty  problems  that  science 
has  been  called  upon  to  solve.  The 
scientist,  of  course,  in  common  with  the 
layman,  has  always  recognized  and  appre- 
ciated its  essentially  beneficent  character, 
so  happily  expressed  in  the  words  of  the 
immortal  Sancho  Panza,  "Blessings  on 
him  who  invented  sleep !  —  the  mantle 
that  covers  all  human  thoughts ;  the  food 
that  appeases  hunger;  the  drink  that 
quenches  thirst ;  the  fire  that  warms ;  the 
cold  that  moderates  heat;  and,  lastly, 
the  general  coin  that  purchases  all  things; 

1 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

the  balance  and  weight  that  make  the 
shepherd  equal  to  the  king  and  the  simple 
to  the  wise."  But,  while  recognizing  the 
kindly  and  restorative  role  played  by  sleep 
in  the  scheme  of  animate  existence,  the 
scientist  almost  as  much  as  the  layman, 
until  lately  at  all  events,  has  been  in  the 
dark  with  respect  to  its  nature  and  mechan- 
ism. Even  the  conditions  that  determine 
its  production  have  been  but  vaguely  and 
partially  understood,  with  the  result,  as 
every  doctor  knows,  that  sleeplessness 
still  constitutes  a  great  stumbling-block  in 
medical  practice. 

Science,  in  fact,  has  quite  generally  been 
content  with  describing  the  phenomena 
of  sleep,  as  one  may  readily  ascertain 
by  examining  the  now  voluminous  liter- 
ature on  the  subject.  Even  when  explan- 
ations have  been  attempted,  they  have 
usually  resolved  themselves  into  descrip- 
tions of  states  that  accompany  sleep  rather 
than  demonstrations  of  the  factors  that 

2 


WHY  WE  SLEEP 

cause  it.  Thus,  the  investigations  carried 
on  by  Durham,  Hammond,  Howell,  Mosso, 
and  others,  alleged  to  prove  that  cerebral 
anaemia,  or  deficiency  of  blood  in  the  brain, 
is  the  great  cause  of  sleep,  really  prove 
nothing  more  than  that  certain  circulatory 
changes  take  place  during  sleep.  Or  if 
the  theories  advanced  are  truly  explanatory 
—  as  is  the  case  with  the  chemical  and 
pathological  theories  which  attribute  sleep 
to  a  poisoning  of  the  system  by  toxic  sub- 
stances that  accumulate  in  the  blood  — 
they  suffer  from  the  serious  objection  that 
sleep  often  occurs  under  conditions  in 
which  the  factors  stressed  cannot  reason- 
ably be  assumed  to  have  a  part.  Small 
wonder,  therefore,  that  many  writers  have 
ventured  on  nothing  more  than  an  elabora- 
tion of  the  obvious,  like  Marie  de  Mana- 
cei'ne,  the  Russian  authority,  whose  the- 
ory of  sleep  is  summed  up  in  the  distinctly 
non-explanatory  phrase:  "Sleep  is  the 
resting-time  of  consciousness." 

3 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

Recently,  however,  a  decided  advance 
has  unquestionably  been  made  in  our  under- 
standing of  this  fundamental  fact  in  the 
life  both  of  man  and  of  the  lower  animals. 
It  is  an  advance  due  in  part  to  the  progress 
of  biological  and  physiological  research,  but 
even  more  due  to  the  extraordinary  develop- 
ment of  that  youngest  of  the  sciences,  psy- 
chology, which  in  the  past  few  years  has 
made  so  many  important  contributions  to 
the  fund  of  human  knowledge.  Not  a  few 
of  these,  it  is  worth  noting,  have  wholly  or 
partly  originated  from  the  increased  atten- 
tion that  the  modern  psychologist  has  paid 
to  the  realm  of  sleep. 

Our  present  appreciation  of  the  marvel- 
ous extent  to  which  one's  intellect,  one's 
character,  and  even  one's  health  are  affected 
by  "subconscious"  emotions  and  memories ; 
our  appreciation  of  the  formative  influence 
of  the  most  trivial  details  in  one's  environ- 
ment, and  of  the  possibility  of  adjusting 
the  environment  in  such  a  way  as  to  make 

4 


WHY  WE  SLEEP 

unfailingly  for  physical,  mental,  and  moral 
upbuilding;  our  fuller  comprehension  cf 
the  principles  that  underlie  and  give  valid- 
ity to  scientific  "psychotherapy,"  or  heal- 
ing by  suggestion,  of  which  the  medical 
fraternity  is  beginning  to  make  systematic 
and  effective  use  —  all  this  has  been  largely 
due  to  recent  psychological  study  of  the 
phenomena  that  occur  either  in  ordinary, 
"natural"  sleep,  or  in  those  allied  sleeping 
states  induced  by  drugs  or  hypnotic  pro- 
cedures. Naturally  enough,  from  study- 
ing the  phenomena  of  sleep,  the  investiga- 
tors have  been  led  to  study  sleep  itself,  with 
results  which,  if  they  do  not  altogether 
dispel  its  mystery,  have  at  least  afforded 
clearer  insight  than  ever  before  into  its 
nature,  significance,  and  causal  conditions 
—  matters  of  considerable  practical  as  well 
as  theoretical  importance,  particularly  in 
this  age  of  stress  and  strain  with  its  im- 
perative demand  for  the  most  efficient 
utilization  of  human  resources,  and  its 

I 


SLEEP  AND   SLEEPLESSNESS 

equally  inexorable  tax  on  the  human  or- 
ganism. 

The  great  difficulty  has  always  been  to 
formulate  an  explanatory  hypothesis  which 
—  excluding  the  various  types  of  pseudo- 
sleep  that  manifestly  result  from  abnormal 
conditions  —  would  adequately  account  for 
the  many  strange  anomalies  presented  by 
sleep.  Any  hypothesis  to  be  satisfactory 
has  to  explain,  for  example,  why  sleep  pre- 
dominates over  waking  life  in  the  case  of 
the  very  young,  why  it  has  a  smaller  share 
in  middle  life,  and  why  it  tends  in  old  age 
to  become  dominant  once  more,  or,  with 
no  ill  effects,  to  be  even  less  in  evidence 
than  in  the  years  of  greatest  virility.  Any 
sound  theory  has  to  explain  the  seeming 
paradox  between  the  periodical  onset  of 
sleep  after  exertion  and  its  frequent  with- 
drawal when  the  exertion  has  been  at  all 
-excessive.  It  has  also  to  explain  the  well- 
established  fact  that  the  amount  of  sleep 
required  is  by  no  means  proportionate  to 

6 


WHY  WE   SLEEP 

the  amount  of  intellectual  or  muscular 
effort  previously  expended,  so  that  we 
often  find  men  of  intense  mental  or  phys- 
ical activity  —  for  instance,  Napoleon, 
Frederick  the  Great,  Schiller,  Humboldt, 
Mirabeau,  the  English  surgeon  John  Hun- 
ter, and  our  own  Thomas  A.  Edison  — 
getting  along  very  well  with  four  or  five 
hours'  sleep  a  night,  as  compared  with  the 
eight  or  nine  hours  of  less  energetic  individ- 
uals. Then,  too,  there  is  the  familiar 
and  most  embarrassing  occurrence  of  sleep 
in  public  places  —  the  church,  the  theater, 
the  opera-house  —  on  the  part  of  persons 
suffering  neither  from  fatigue  nor  from  any 
interruption  to  their  regular  night's  rest; 
and,  opposed  to  this,  the  chronic  wakeful- 
ness  of  the  insomniac  in  the  dark  and  quiet 
of  his  home,  utterly  worn  out  yet  unable 
to  sleep. 

These  are  only  a  few  of  the  puzzling 
phases  that  have  to  be  accounted  for,  and 
that  have  combined  to  baffle  until  now  all 

7 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

efforts  at  a  consistent  and  comprehensive 
explanation  of  sleep.  But  with  the  de- 
velopment of  modern  psychology,  and, 
above  all,  with  the  increased  appreciation 
it  has  enforced  of  the  preponderating  in- 
fluence of  the  psychical  factor  in  all  aspects 
of  human  existence,  real  progress  towards 
such  an  explanation  has,  as  was  said,  been 
made.  It  is  now  known  that  sleep,  con- 
trary to  the  belief  formerly  so  widely  enter- 
tained, is  no  mere  passive,  negative  state, 
the  product  of  toxic  or  other  harmful  ele- 
ments, but  is  an  active,  positive  function, 
a  protective  instinct  of  gradual  evolution 
and  dependent  for  its  operation  partly  on 
the  will  and  partly  on  the  environment. 
It  is  the  result  of  a  certain  reaction  between 
the  central  nervous  system  and  the  stimuli 
impinging  on  it,  its  object  being  not  so 
much  the  recuperation  of  the  organism 
from  the  effects  of  the  activities  of  the  in- 
tervening period  of  waking  life,  as  to  save 
the  organism  from  the  destructive  conse- 

8 


WHY  WE  SLEEP 

quences  of  uninterrupted  activity.  Or  as 
one  investigator,  Doctor  Boris  Sidis,  the 
well-known  American  medical  psycholo- 
gist, affirms : 

"Sleep  is  not  a  disease,  not  a  pathological 
process  due  to  the  accumulation  of  toxic 
products  in  the  brain  or  in  the  system  gener- 
ally. Sleep  is  not  an  abnormal  condition; 
it  is  a  normal  state.  Like  the  waking 
states,  sleep  states  are  part  and  parcel  of 
the  life-existence  of  the  individual.  Wak- 
ing and  sleeping  are  intimately  related  — 
they  are  two  different  manifestations  of  one 
and  the  same  life-process  —  one  is  as  nor- 
mal and  healthy  as  the  other.  One  cannot 
help  agreeing  with  Claperede's  biological 
view  that  sleep  is  a  positive  function  of  the 
organism,  that  sleep  belongs  to  the  funda- 
mental instincts.  As  Claperede  forcibly 
puts  it: 

"' Sleep  is  a  protective  function,  an  in- 
stinct having  for  end,  in  striking  the  animal 
with  inertia,  to  prevent  it  from  arriving  at 

9 


a  condition  of  exhaustion.  We  sleep,  not 
because  we  are  poisoned  or  exhausted,  but 
so  that  we  shall  be  neither  poisoned  nor 
exhausted.'"1 

In  order  for  sleep  to  function,  however, 
sundry  requirements  must  be  complied  with, 
and  it  is  not  the  least  important  outcome 
of  the  recent  researches  that,  by  the  two- 
fold method  of  experiment  and  observation, 
they  have  pretty  definitely  established  just 
what  these  requirements  are.  Especially 
noteworthy  in  this  connection  is  the  experi- 
mental work  carried  on  by  Doctor  Sidis, 
and  leading  him  to  the  conclusion  just 
quoted. 

His  study  of  sleep  was  a  direct  out- 
growth of  his  labors  in  medical  psychology, 
since  it  had  as  its  starting-point  the  dis- 
covery that  an  ingenious  technique  he 
had  devised  for  putting  nervous  patients 
into  a  "dissociated"  state  as  a  preliminary 
to  psychotherapeutic  treatment,  had  the 

'"An  Experimental  Study  of  Sleep,"  p.  88. 
10 


WHY  WE   SLEEP 

further  effect,  when  prolonged,  of  causing 
them  to  fall  asleep.  This  technique,  which 
he  calls  hypnoidization,  and  which  is  some- 
thing quite  distinct  from  hypnotism,  may 
best  be  described  in  his  own  words : 

"The  patient  is  asked  to  close  his  eyes 
and  keep  as  quiet  as  possible,  without,  how- 
ever, making  any  special  effort  to  put  him- 
self in  such  a  state.  He  is  then  asked  to 
attend  to  some  stimulus,  such  as  reading 
or  singing,  or  to  the  monotonous  beats  of 
a  metronome.  Or  he  may  be  asked  to 
fixate  his  attention  on  some  object,  while 
at  the  same  time  listening  to  the  beats  of 
the  metronome.  His  eyes  are  then  closed, 
he  is  to  keep  very  quiet,  while  the  metro- 
nome or  some  other  monotonous  stimulus 
is  continued.  After  some  time,  when  his 
respiration  and  pulse  are  found  somewhat 
lowered,  he  is  asked  to  concentrate  his 
attention  on  a  subject  closely  relating  to 
the  symptoms  of  his  malady.  In  other 
words,  the  patient  is  in  a  hypnoidal  state, 

11 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

favorable  to  the  emergence  of  subconscious 
memories."  l 

Now,  observing  that  the  state  thus  in- 
duced was  not  only  exceedingly  unstable 
and  transitory,  but  tended  to  result  in  a 
more  or  less  profound  sleep,  Doctor  Sidis 
conjectured  that  it  might  be  identical  with 
the  "borderland"  state  through  which  it 
has  long  been  known  that  people  always 
pass  when  falling  asleep.  If  this  were  the 
case,  it  could  logically  be  inferred  that  the 
conditions  essential  to  the  causation  of 
the  hypnoidal  state  as  outlined  in  the  pas- 
sage just  quoted  —  that  is  to  say,  fixation 
followed  by  relaxation  of  the  attention, 
limitation  of  voluntary  movement,  limita- 
tion of  consciousness,  and  monotonous 
stimulation  —  were  precisely  the  conditions 
operant  in  the  production  of  sleep.  His 
scientific  curiosity  and  interest  aroused, 
Doctor  Sidis  now  began,  in  his  own  labora- 

*" Studies  in   Psychopathology,"  in  the  Boston  Medical  and 
Surgical  Journal,  March  and  April,  1007. 

12 


WHY  WE  SLEEP 

tory  and  in  the  laboratory  of  the  Harvard 
Medical  School,  a  long  series  of  experiments 
on  different  animals  —  frogs,  guineapigs, 
cats,  and  dogs  —  and  on  children  of  a  few 
days  to  several  years  old,  applying  to  each 
as  far  as  was  possible  the  conditions  he  had 
found  favorable  for  the  bringing  about  of  the 
hypnoidal  state  in  adult  men  and  women. 

In  every  case  he  discovered  that  when  he 
limited  the  sensory  impressions  by  closing 
the  eyes,  inhibiting  voluntary  movements, 
and  applying  a  monotonous  stimulus  — 
such  as  a  gentle  stroking  of  the  subject's 
body  —  there  resulted  a  state  closely  an- 
alogous to  the  hypnoidal  condition,  and 
followed  by  a  state  of  sleep.  A  quotation 
from  Doctor  Sidis's  detailed  account  of 
his  experiments  with  some  puppies  will 
give  an  idea  of  the  methods  employed  by 
him  and  the  results  obtained  in  the  case  of 
animals : 

"Two  puppies  of  about  two  months  old ; 
very  lively,  excitable,  and  barking  vio- 

13 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

lently.  After  some  struggle  each  one  was 
wrapped  in  a  cloth  so  that  even  the  fore- 
paws  did  not  protude.  At  first  they  were 
greatly  excited  by  the  proceeding,  and  pro- 
claimed their  indignation  by  loud  yelping. 
I  took  my  turn  with  each  one  separately. 
The  puppy  was  held  down  firmly  and  given 
no  chance  to  move  its  body  or  to  struggle 
with  its  paws.  I  also  closed  the  puppy's 
eyes  with  my  fingers.  The  puppy  struggled 
and  wriggled  under  my  hand,  but  I  held  on 
tightly. 

"Gradually  the  puppy  ceased  its  struggles 
and  became  very  quiet.  Respiration  became 
slow  and  regular.  I  gradually  released  my 
grip  on  the  dog,  when  I  found  that  its  eyes 
were  firmly  closed.  The  puppy  was  fast 
asleep. 

"The  same  performance  was  carried  out 
in  the  case  of  the  other  puppy. .  After  five 
minutes,  during  which  time  I  held  the  dog 
tightly  and  kept  all  the  extremities  in 
close  grip,  the  puppy  passed  into  a  quiet 

14 


state  and  fell  asleep  as  the  first  one  did. 
Respiration  was  slow  and  uniform.  Both 
puppies  slept  peacefully.  There  was  no 
response  u*  external  stimuli.  Limbs  were 
in  a  state  of  relaxation.  In  spite  of  the 
noise  in  the  neighboring  room  the  puppies 
kept  on  sleeping.  After  twenty  minutes 
one  of  the  puppies  woke  up,  made  some 
show  of  struggle,  but  the  eyes  remained  shut 
and  he  fell  asleep  again.  I  tried  to  loosen  the 
cloth  in  which  the  puppies  lay  enwrapped. 
My  manipulations  did  not  disturb  their 
sleep.  .  .  . 

;<  Three  new  puppies  were  very  tractable. 
They  fell  asleep  with  the  greatest  ease 
imaginable.  The  puppies  were  about  two 
and  a  half  weeks  old,  were  quite  gentle  and 
showed  almost  no  resistance.  The  same 
phenomena  were  present  as  in  the  other 
dogs;  they  went  to  sleep  under  the  same 
conditions,  their  paws  for  a  brief  period  of 
a  few  seconds  were  extended  and  slightly 
resistive.  Limbs  retained  the  position 

15 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

given  to  them.  The  eyelids  were  firmly 
shut  and  there  was  resistance  to  attempts 
to  force  them  open.  When  forced  open 
the  eyeballs  were  rolled  up,  and  the  eyelids 
closed  as  soon  as  they  were  let  go.  The 
puppies  seemed  to  possess  the  power  of 
sleeping  indefinitely.  Now  and  then  suck- 
ing and  snapping  movements  were  observed. 
They  slept  for  more  than  an  hour,  and  would 
have  gone  on  sleeping  had  they  not  been 
rudely  shaken  out  of  their  peaceful  repose. 
"The  experiments  were  repeated  with 
the  same  results.  As  the  puppies  got  older 
the  manifestations  of  the  transient,  inter- 
mediate state  became  more  pronounced  - 
catalepsy  was  more  evident  on  falling 
asleep.  The  same  held  true  in  the  case  of 
waking  up.  There  was  a  slight  stiffness 
and  catalepsy  of  the  paws  for  a  brief  period 
when  the  puppy  emerged  from  sleep.  On 
falling  asleep  the  puppies  did  not  tumble 
at  once  into  that  state,  they  opened  and 
shut  their  eyes,  when  my  fingers  were 

16 


WHY  WE  SLEEP 

released  from  pressing  their  eyelids.  They 
kept  on  blinking  the  eyes.  The  lids  came 
nearer  together  and  finally  closed.  The 
same  process  of  blinking  was  observed  on 
waking;  they  seemed  to  wake  and  fall 
asleep  again,  thus  being  really  in  the 
intermediary,  hypnoidal  state,  hovering  be- 
tween waking  state  and  sleep,  both  on 
going  to  and  coming  out  of  sleep.  .  .  . 

"I  may  add  that  I  also  carried  out 
similar  experiments  on  a  dog  of  six  months 
old.  As  the  dog  was  used  to  me  I  had  no 
difficulty  in  inducing  sleep.  I  made  him 
keep  quiet  and  then  closed  his  eyes  firmly. 
He  went  to  sleep.  When  I  tried  to  open 
his  eyes  they  resisted.  When  I  opened 
them  I  found  the  eyeballs  rolled  up, 
nictitating  membrane  over  part  of  sclera, 
and  pupils  were  contracted.  There  were 
present  the  same  manifestations  of  hyp- 
noidal states,  the  slight  catalepsy  on  falling 
asleep  and  a  similar,  though  somewhat 
slighter,  catalepsy  on  awaking.  There  was 

17 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

little  difficulty  in  putting  the  dog  to  sleep. 
With  the  repetition  of  the  experiments 
it  was  easier  to  put  him  into  hypnoidal 
states  and  sleep  under  the  conditions  of 
monotony,  limitation  of  voluntary  move- 
ments, and  inhibition.  The  dog  was  very 
lively  otherwise,  but  when  put  under  the 
conditions  of  monotony  and  limitation  of 
voluntary  activity,  he  sank  into  a  passive 
state  and  then  into  a  state  of  sleep."1 

In  the  case  of  the  children  with  whom 
Doctor  Sidis  experimented,  he  discovered 
that,  as  compared  with  adults,  they  reacted 
far  more  readily  to  his  methods  for  bringing 
on  sleep,  and  this  he  saw  reason  to  attrib- 
ute to  the  inferiority  of  their  mental  de- 
velopment. 

"This  ease  of  induction  of  sleep,"  is  the 
way  he  explains  it,   "is  furthered  by  the 
comparatively  small  amount  of  variability 
of  conscious  activity  present  in  the  child  - 
the  variability  of  mental  content  being  an 

1  "An  Experimental  Study  of  Sleep,"  pp.  40-53, 

18 


WHY  WE  SLEEP 

important  factor  in  keeping  up  the  fresh- 
ness, continuity,  and  qualitative  intensity 
of  consciousness.  Now,  as  the  child  de- 
pends entirely  for  the  variability  of  its 
consciousness  on  muscular  activity  and 
external  impressions,  we  can  well  realize 
that  when  those  sources  become  limited 
and  monotonous  the  child  falls  under  the 
influence  of  all  the  important  conditions 
requisite  for  the  induction  of  sleep.  The 
child,  in  short,  has  no  inner  wealth  of  men- 
tal life  to  fall  upon  ;  it  has  little  if  any  inner 
resources ;  that  is  why  it  falls  an  easy  prey 
to  sleep  when  the  external  resources  lose 
their  variability,  become  uniform  and 
monotonous."1 

The  longer  he  experimented,  the  stronger 
became  Doctor  Sidis's  conviction  that  in 
monotony  we  have  the  central  fact  in  the 
causation  of  sleep.  When  we  sleep,  we 
do  so  because  our  consciousness  is  no  longer 
stimulated  by  a  sufficient  variety  of  sensa- 

1  "An  Experimental  Study  of  Sleep,"  p.  55. 

19 


SLEEP  AND   SLEEPLESSNESS 

tions  to  keep  us  in  a  waking  state.  The 
variety,  for  that  matter,  may  actually  be 
present.  But  sensation-strain  has  fatigued 
our  attention ;  for  us,  variety  itself  has 
temporarily  become  monotonous,  and  we 
fall  asleep.  Or  if,  when  our  customary 
sleeping-time  arrives,  we  nevertheless  find 
ourselves  in  an  alert  state,  but  feel  that  we 
ought  to  go  to  sleep,  we  proceed  to  put 
ourselves  to  sleep  by  a  process  that  instinc- 
tively duplicates  the  conditions  of  exper- 
imental hypnoidization.  That  is,  we  un> 
dress  and  recline  in  bed,  thereby  markedly 
limiting  our  voluntary  movements ;  we  ex- 
tinguish the  light  and  close  our  eyes,  limiting 
the  sensorial  field  and  producing  the  monot- 
onous stimulation  of  darkness ;  we  relax  our 
attention,  and  presently  we  fall  asleep. 

Much  the  same  view,  which  obviously 
makes  sleep  chiefly  dependent  on  the 
character  of  the  stimuli  received  by  the 
consciousness,  is  maintained  by  other  re- 
cent experimental  students  of  the  subject, 
20 


WHY  WE  SLEEP 

especially  the  European  scientists  Verworn 
and  Huebel.  On  the  other  hand,  it  has 
been  sharply  criticised  by  at  least  one 
investigator,  another  medical  psychologist, 
Doctor  I.  H.  Coriat,  whose  own  experi- 
ments1 have  led  him  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  main  factor  in  the  induction  of  sleep 
is  the  influence,  not  of  monotonous  stimuli, 
but  of  muscular  relaxation.  "When  we 
relax,  the  motor  phenomena  become  less- 
ened, and  this  tends  to  produce  drowsiness 
and  finally  sleep,  due  to  a  diminution  of 
peripheral  stimuli  from  the  muscles  to  the 
brain,  produced  by  the  act  of  muscular 
relaxation."  Doctor  Coriat  admits,  how- 
ever, that  the  muscular  relaxation  itself 
may  result  from  a  relaxation  of  the  atten- 
tion, and  thus  he  still  leaves  the  way  open 
for  the  application  of  the  monotony  theory 
as  explanatory  of  the  sleeping  state. 
Moreover,  it  is  possible  to  cite  many  in- 

1  Reported  by  Doctor  Coriat  in    The  Journal  of  Abnormal 
Psychology,  vol.  VI,  pp.  329-367. 

21 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

stances  of  sleep  occurring  under  conditions 
of  muscular  tension,  as  in  the  case  of 
travelers  falling  asleep  on  horseback,  and 
soldiers  on  the  march,  without  any  diminu- 
tion of  their  ability  to  ride  and  walk,  carry 
their  rifles  in  the  proper  position,  keep  in 
step,  etc.  W.  A.  Hammond,  one  of  the 
earlier  scientific  investigators  of  sleep,  testi- 
fies that  he  himself  often  slept  on  horseback, 
and  specifically  calls  attention  to  the  phenom- 
enon of  sleeping  pedestrianism  as  ex- 
hibited by  Galen  and  the  Abbe  Richard, 
the  latter  of  whom  "states  that  once  when 
coming  from  the  country,  alone  and  on 
foot,  sleep  overtook  him  when  he  was  more 
than  half  a  league  from  town.  He  con- 
tinued to  walk,  however,  though  soundly 
asleep,  over  an  uneven  and  crooked  road." 
Galen  similarly  walked  more  than  two 
hundred  yards  while  in  a  deep  sleep,  and 
"would  probably  have  gone  further  but 
for  the  fact  of  his  striking  his  foot  against 
a  stone  and  thus  awaking." 

22 


WHY  WE  SLEEP 

Occurrences  like  these  would  be  impossible 
if  muscular  relaxation  really  were  funda- 
mental to  sleep.  But  they  are  quite  com- 
patible with  the  monotony  theory,  which 
indeed  has  the  merit  of  offering  a  more 
complete  and  convincing  explanation  for 
the  various  anomalies  of  sleep  than  does 
any  other  theory.  It  finds  also  striking 
corroboration  in  facts  of  every-day  obser- 
vation, as  well  as  in  occasional  happenings 
of  an  extraordinary  character,  which  both 
reinforce  it  and  are  themselves  difficult  of 
explanation  without  resort  to  it. 

Take,  for  example,  the  application  of 
the  theory  to  explain  the  somnolence  of 
infancy  by  stressing  the  feebleness  of  in- 
tellectual development  in  the  very  young 
child  and  the  consequent  lack  of  diversity 
of  its  interests.  The  explanation  hitherto 
usually  advanced  for  this  is  that  children 
sleep  more  than  adults  because  they  need 
more  sleep  as  compensation  for  the  strain 
of  the  growth  process.  If  this  were  so  it 

23 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

would  follow  that  with  the  attainment  of 
organic  growth  there  would  always  be  an 
appreciable  diminution  of  the  sleeping- 
time.  But  the  fact  actually  is  that  certain 
types  of  adults  —  and  these  invariably 
persons  of  inferior  intellectual  develop- 
ment —  tend,  like  children,  to  spend  much 
of  their  lives  in  sleep. 

Such  is  the  case  with  idiots  and  imbeciles, 
and  it  is  also  the  case  with  savages,  who,  as 
was  long  ago  pointed  out  by  Dugald  Stew- 
art, have  a  habit  of  falling  asleep  when 
their  minds  are  unoccupied.  So,  too,  that 
shrewd  philosopher-statesman,  Jefferson,  re- 
corded in  his  "Notes  on  Virginia,"  "The 
existence  of  the  Negro  slaves  in  America 
appears  to  participate  more  of  sensation 
than  reflection.  To  this  must  be  ascribed 
their  disposition  to  sleep  when  abstracted 
from  their  diversions  and  unemployed  in 
their  labor."  In  this  connection  should 
be  cited  also  the  experience  of  the  unfor- 
tunate youth,  Caspar  Hauser,  whose 

24 


WHY  WE   SLEEP 

pathetic  career  has  deservedly  and  for 
more  than  one  reason  been  often  made  the 
subject  of  scientific  discussion. 

Caspar  Hauser,  to  recall  the  facts  as 
briefly  as  possible,  was  an  unhappy  German 
lad,  kept  prisoner  in  a  dungeon  from  early 
childhood,  in  absolute  solitude,  and  without 
so  much  as  a  glimpse  of  men,  animals,  the 
sky,  the  sun,  the  moon,  the  stars,  or  any 
other  object  in  the  external  wrorld.  In 
1828,  at  the  age  of  seventeen  or  eighteen, 
he  was  taken  from  his  place  of  confinement 
and  turned  adrift  in  the  streets  of  Nurem- 
berg. The  charitable  persons  who  took 
charge  of  him  soon  discovered  that  his 
mental  state  was  little  more  advanced 
than  that  of  a  few-months-old  baby,  and 
that,  like  a  baby,  he  easily  and  frequently 
fell  asleep.  It  seemed  impossible  for  him 
to  remain  awake  after  sunset,  and  in  the 
daytime  to  take  him  outdoors  was  enough 
to  plunge  him  into  a  deep  sleep,  even  in  a 
roughly  jolting  vehicle.  Says  one  of  his 

25 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

teachers,  writing  some  months  after  his 
mysterious  appearance  in  Nuremberg : 

"Caspar  sinks,  even  yet,  whenever  he 
rides  in  a  carriage  or  a  wagon,  into  a  kind 
of  death  sleep,  from  which  he  does  not 
easily  awake,  whether  the  vehicle  stops  or 
rolls  on ;  and  in  this  state,  how  roughly 
soever  it  may  be  done,  he  may  be  lifted  up 
or  laid  down  and  packed  or  unpacked  wllli- 
out  his  having  the  least  perception  of  it. 
When  sleep  has  once  laid  hold  of  him,  no 
noise,  no  sound,  no  report,  no  thunder,  is 
loud  enough  to  wake  him."1 

Here,  clearly,  is  the  case  of  a  youth  long 
past  the  age  of  infancy,  and  experiencing 
not  at  all  the  need  of  sleep  as  an  aid  to 
bodily  growth,  yet  sleeping  as  an  infant 
sleeps.  Only  by  assuming  that  both  in 
his  case  and  in  that  of  the  ordinary  babe 
the  determining  factor  is  at  bottom  the 
paucity  of  the  mental  life,  quickly  rendering 
all  stimuli  monotonous  by  reason  of  in- 

1  Anselm  von  Feuerbach's  "Caspar  Hauser." 
26 


WHY  WE  SLEEP 

ability  to  differentiate  and  be  intelligently 
interested  in  them,  is  it  possible,  it  seems 
to  me,  to  arrive  at  a  satisfactory  explan- 
ation. 

In  like  manner  the  monotony  theory  en- 
ables us  as  nothing  else  does  to  under- 
stand the  enormous  variations  in  the  time 
taken  for  sleep  by  adults  of  approximately 
similar  physical  constitutions.  It  surely 
is  no  mere  coincidence  that,  as  common 
observation  shows,  the  men  and  women  who 
habitually,  and  without  untoward  conse- 
quences, take  a  shorter  night's  rest  than  the 
majority  of  their  fellows,  are  men  and 
women  of  unusual  intellectual  keenness  and 
a  wide  range  of  interests.  Such  people 
are  seldom  "bored";  they  find  food  for 
thought  and  entertainment  in  everything; 
they  are  alive  in  every  way.  Typical  in 
this  connection  is  the  case  of  Rudolf 
Virchow,  as  narrated  by  Doctor  James  J. 
Walsh,  who  undoubtedly  gives  it  the  correct 
explanation : 

27 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

"For  more  than  a  year  I  lived  close  to 
the  great  German  pathologist  Virchow, 
and  found  that  his  varied  interests  were 
probably  the  secret  of  his  power  to  devote 
himself  to  work  for  many  hours  a  day,  take 
only  a  small  amount  of  sleep,  and  yet  live 
healthily  and  happily  for  over  eighty  years. 
Frequently  he  did  not  leave  the  Prussian 
Legislature  until  1  A.M.,  or  even  later,  and 
yet  he  seldom  failed  to  be  at  his  laboratory 
before  7 :  30  o'clock  in  the  morning,  though 
it  was  several  miles  from  his  home  and  took 
over  half  an  hour  to  get  there.  Besides 
pathology  he  was  deeply  interested  in 
anthropology  and  in  most  of  the  biological 
sciences,  and  his  favorite  hobby  was  the 
practical  care  of  the  health  of  the  city  of 
Berlin.  From  the  time  that  Berlin,  just 
after  the  Franco-Prussian  War,  began  to 
grow  out  of  the  half-million  provincial 
town  that  it  was  into  the  great  world  capital 
that  it  became,  Virchow  had  charge  of  the 
health  of  the  men  engaged  on  the  sewer 

28 


WHY  WE  SLEEP 

farms  of  the  city.  .  .  .  His  visits  to  the 
farms,  his  planning  for  the  prevention  of 
the  spread  of  disease,  his  deep  interest  in 
the  reports  and  the  constant  improvement 
of  conditions,  instead  of  hampering  his 
other  intellectual  activity  by  wasting  brain 
force,  probably  proved  restful  by  diverting 
the  blood  stream  away  to  the  cells  that 
occupied  themselves  with  this  other  and 
very  different  problem,  and  so  proved  a 
benefit,  not  an  evil."1 

And,  as  Virchow's  case  further  suggests, 
unless  disease  wreakens  their  elasticity  of 
mind,  persons  of  keen  and  varied  interests 
usually  retain  even  in  extreme  old  age,  the 
ability  to  do  with  less  sleep  than  other 
people.  Whereas  it  is  equally  a  common- 
place of  observation  that  persons  of  in- 
ferior intellectual  activity  or  of  a  compara- 
tively limited  mental  outlook,  persons  whose 
lives  are  cast  in  a  dull  routine,  are  as  a  rule 
inclined  to  indulge  in  exceptionally  long 

1  "Psychotherapy,"  p.  226. 

29 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

periods  of  sleep,  like  the  proverbial  farmer 
who  "goes  to  bed  with  the  hens."  That 
they  do  so,  it  may  safely  be  affirmed,  is 
because  the  stimuli  of  their  environment 
more  readily  become  tedious  and  monoto- 
nous to  them,  and  they  sleep  as  a  defense 
reaction  against  ennui. 

All  of  which  would  suggest,  of  course, 
that  most  of  us  sleep  longer  than  is  really 
necessary.  Personally  I  have  no  doubt 
that  this  is  the  case.  It  has  been  exper- 
imentally shown  that,  even  following  pro- 
tracted vigils,  a  surprisingly  small  amount 
of  sleep  is  needed  to  effect  complete  re- 
cuperation. In  one  particularly  interesting 
set  of  experiments,  made  some  years  ago 
by  Professor  Patrick  and  Doctor  Gilbert 
in  the  psychological  laboratory  of  the 
University  of  Iowa,  three  members  of  the 
teaching  staff  were  kept  continuously  awake 
for  about  ninety  hours.  Being  then  allowed 
to  go  to  bed,  they  found  it  necessary  to 
make  up  only  from  sixteen  to  thirty-five 

30 


WHY  WE  SLEEP 

per  cent,  of  the  time  lost  from  sleep. 
Students  of  sleep  are  agreed,  in  fact,  that 
it  is  the  quality  of  sleep  that  counts  rather 
than  the  amount,  and  that  certain  dangers, 
physical  and  mental,  attend  the  develop- 
ment of  an  undue  "sleep  habit."  To  quote 
Marie  de  Manace'ine,  who  has  given  special 
attention  to  this  aspect  of  the  sleep  problem  : 
"If  a  man  sleeps  longer  than  the  repose 
of  consciousness  and  the  repair  of  the  tissues 
require,  there  will,  in  the  first  place,  be  an 
enfeeblement  of  consciousness  from  lack  of 
exercise ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  an 
adaptation  of  the  vessels  to  an  abnormal 
state  of  the  nutritive  circulation,  to  the 
detriment  of  the  functional  circulation. 
Consequently  we  may  have  ground  to 
apprehend  trouble  in  the  respiratory  ex- 
change and  an  over-production  of  carbonic 
acid  —  not  a  matter  of  indifference  to  the 
organism,  which  may  sooner  or  later  be 
injured  thereby."1 

1  "Sleep,"  p.  158. 
31 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

For  these  reasons  Madame  de  Manaceme 
strongly,  and  justly,  deprecates  the  practice 
indulged  in  by  too  many  nurses,  and  even 
mothers,  of  artificially  prolonging  the  sleep 
of  their  children  out  of  a  selfish  desire  to 
have  more  time  to  themselves ;  and  she 
approvingly  recites  the  German  saying, 
"He  has  been  rocked  into  stupidity,"  as 
epigrammatically  expressive  of  something 
more  than  a  mere  witticism.  Nevertheless, 
if  at  every  age  of  life  it  is  important  to 
guard  against  any  tendency  to  excessive 
sleep,  and  if  there  is  reason  to  believe  that 
the  majority  of  people  sleep  more  than  is 
actually  necessary,  it  would  be  highly 
imprudent  to  ad  vise  any  arbitrary  shortening 
of  the  hours  of  sleep. 

This  can  safely  be  achieved  only  through 
the  gradual  process  of  consciously  or  un- 
consciously habituating  the  mind  to  act 
more  vigorously  and  expansively  —  a  pro- 
cess which  seems  to  have  the  dual  effect 
of  prolonging  the  waking  period  and  at 

32 


WHY  WE  SLEEP 

the  same  time  of  prolonging  it  without 
injury  to  the  organism.  No  doubt  this  is 
partly  due  to  an  improvement  in  the  quality 
of  the  sleep  taken,  but  it  must  also  be  due 
in  part  to  a  positive  strengthening  of  the 
constitution  by  an  increased  exercise  of 
the  mental  powers,  a  view  borne  out  by 
the  interesting  circumstance  that  the  great 
thinkers  of  the  world  —  the  Spencers,  Glad- 
stones, and  Franklins  —  have  generally 
been  long-lived,  notwithstanding  that  in 
many  cases  they  were  of  frail  physique  in 
youth. 

But  to  develop  a  shorter  sleep  habit  with- 
out basing  it  on  an  increase  in  mental  devel- 
opment can  only  have  disastrous  effects, 
for  the  reason  that  an  excessive  strain  will 
necessarily  be  imposed  on  a  brain  accus- 
tomed to  function  actively  only  so  many 
hours  each  day.  That  is  why,  however 
true  it  may  be  to  say  that  four  or  five  hours' 
sleep  should  be  enough  for  any  man,  most 
men  at  present  require  a  much  longer 

33 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

sleeping-time,  and  will  continue  to  require 
it  until,  with  the  progress  of  educational 
reforms,  a  maximal  brain  development 
shall  happily  become  the  rule,  not  the 
exception.  Even  then  there  must  go  apace 
with  increase  in  mental  activity  an  in- 
creased power  of  moral  control  —  a  power 
which  will  enable  men  to  think  hard  but 
calmly,  to  meet  the  vicissitudes  of  life  with 
fortitude,  to  withstand  all  incentives  to 
impatience,  anxiety,  worry.  Otherwise 
the  greater  activity  of  their  minds  will 
inevitably  become  a  source  of  positive 
danger,  by  rendering  them  easy  victims 
to  that  cerebral  over-stimulation  which 
leads  not  to  too  much  sleep  but  to  too  little. 

What,  then,  under  present  conditions, 
should  be  the  sleeping-period  for  the 
average  person?  To  this  question,  reply 
might  well  be  made  in  the  words  of  Madame 
de  Manaceme : 

"During  the  first  four  or  six  weeks  of 
Jife  Upere  ought  to  be  two  waking  hours 

34 


WHY  WE  SLEEP 

during  the  day,  and  as  the  baby  grows  the 
duration  of  this  period  should  gradually 
increase.  Between  the  ages  of  one  and  two 
years,  children  need  eighteen  to  sixteen 
hours  of  sleep  out  of  the  twenty-four ;  be- 
tween two  and  three  years,  seventeen  to 
fifteen  hours ;  between  three  and  four 
years,  sixteen  to  fourteen  hours ;  between 
four  and  six  years,  fifteen  to  thirteen  hours ; 
between  six  and  nine  years,  twelve  to  ten 
hours ;  between  nine  and  thirteen  years, 
from  ten  to  eight  hours. 

"At  the  critical  age  of  puberty,  during 
the  transition  from  childhood  to  adoles- 
cence, the  duration  of  sleep  should  be  some- 
what augmented.  At  the  end  of  this 
period  it  may  be  reduced  to  from  seven  to 
nine  hours;  and  only  after  the  completion 
of  growth,  at  the  age  of  nineteen  or  twenty, 
can  it  be  safely  brought  as  low  as  six  to 
eight  hours  a  day.  Those  who  have 
reached  middle  age,  the  age  at  which  con- 
sciousness and  the  other  psychic  faculties 

35 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

have  attained  the  zenith  of  their  develop- 
ment, may  content  themselves  with  even 
less,  but  only  so  long  as  they  are  in  perfect 
health.  On  the  whole,  it  may  be  said 
that  eight  hours  is,  on  the  average,  the 
amount  which  adults  may  most  wisely 
devote  to  sleep." 


36 


CHAPTER   II 
The  Mind  in  Sleep 

IT  was  a  personal  experience  of  a  sin- 
gular character  that  first  impressed 
upon  me,  some  years  ago,  the  impor- 
tance of  dreams  as  a  subject  for  serious 
investigation.  Until  then  I  had  shared 
the  opinion  prevailing  among  laymen  — 
and,  it  would  seem,  among  most  scientists 
also  —  that  dreams  are  entirely  fanciful 
and  meaningless.  But  my  experience  was 
such  that  I  could  no  longer  believe  this. 
To  state  it  briefly,  it  involved  the  re- 
currence of  a  most  bizarre  dream.  At 
least  twenty  times  during  a  period  of  six 
months  I  had  the  same  dream  —  namely, 
that  a  cat  was  clawing  at  my  throat.  The 
stage  setting  and  the  minor  incidents  might 
vary,  but  always  the  central  episode  was 

37 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

the  same,  and  usually  the  fury  of  the  dream 
cat's  onset  was  so  great  that  it  would 
awaken  me.  Naturally,  this  recurrent 
dream  puzzled  me,  so  much  so  that  I  spoke 
about  it.  But,  ascribing  it  to  indigestion, 
and  classifying  it  with  ordinary  nightmares, 
I  did  not  let  it  worry  me  at  all. 

Then,  one  day,  the  accident  of  a  heavy 
cold  that  settled  in  my  throat  led  to  a 
medical  examination  which,  much  to  my 
surprise,  revealed  the  presence  of  a  growth 
requiring  immediate  treatment  by  the  sur- 
geon's knife.  Some  time  afterward  it  sud- 
denly occurred  to  me  that  since  the  removal 
of  the  dangerous  growth  I  had  not  once 
been  troubled  by  the  cat-clawing  dream. 
Its  significance  now  began  to  dawn  on  me. 

I  had  suffered  no  pain,  not  even  incon- 
venience, from  the  growth  in  my  throat. 
In  fact,  I  had  not  consciously  been  aware 
of  its  presence.  But  unquestionably  the 
organic  changes  accompanying  it  had  given 
rise  to  sensations  which,  slight  though  they 

38 


THE   MIND   IN  SLEEP 

were,  had  made  an  impression  on  my  sleep- 
ing consciousness  sufficient  to  excite  it  to  ac- 
tivity. My  recurrent  dream  consequently 
was  to  be  regarded  as  a  symbolic  repre- 
sentation of  the  disorder  in  my  throat  — 
an  attempt  to  interpret  it,  to  explain  it. 
And  indeed,  even  in  the  dream,  for  all  its 
fantastic  imagery  and  symbolism,  the  seat 
of  the  trouble  was  indicated  plainly  enough, 
as  I  could  appreciate  after  the  surgeon  had 
completed  his  labors. 

The  possibility  at  once  suggested  itself 
that,  after  all,  dreaming  might  not  be  such 
an  irrational  process  as  I  had  hitherto 
supposed  it;  and,  further,  that  from  both 
a  theoretical  and  a  practical  point  of  view 
the  state  of  the  mind  in  sleep  might  well 
repay  examination.  It  seemed  certain, 
judging  from  my  own  experience,  that 
some  dreams,  at  all  events,  had  a  meaning ; 
and  my  astonishment  was  great,  when  I 
began  to  explore  the  literature  on  the 
subject,  to  discover  how  little  had  been 

39 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

done  in  the  way  of  systematic  inquiry.  A 
great  many  facts  and  observations  had  been 
assembled,  but  with  scarcely  any  attempt  to 
collate  them  and  ascertain  the  laws  of 
dreaming.  This,  fortunately,  is  less  the 
case  to-day;  the  researches  of  such  psy- 
chologists as  Sigmund  Freud,  Morton 
Prince,  Pierre  Janet,  and  Havelock  Ellis 
having  of  late  considerably  advanced  our 
knowledge,  and  having  conclusively  dem- 
onstrated that  the  world  of  dreams,  quite 
as  much  as  the  world  of  waking  life,  is  a 
world  of  order  in  which  things  do  not  hap- 
pen by  chance. 

Superficially,  of  course,  it  often  is  a 
topsyturvy  world,  places,  persons,  and 
•events  being  jumbled  together  in  amazing 
defiance  of  the  laws  of  nature.  The  in- 
congruities of  that  classic  dream-story 
"Alice  in  Wonderland,"  or  the  late  W.  S. 
Gilbert's  grotesque  but  fascinating  dream- 
recitative,  the  Lord  Chancellor's  song  in 
''lolanthe,"  are  paralleled  every  night  by 

40 


THE   MIND   IN  SLEEP 

the  incongruities  of  actual  dream  experi- 
ences. Probably  this  fact,  more  than  any- 
thing else,  is  responsible  for  the  prevailing 
contempt  for  dreams  and  belief  in  their 
irrationality. 

In  reality,  there  is  reason  in  the  most 
"nonsensical"  of  dreams,  as  can  always 
be  shown  if  one  takes  the  trouble  to  analyze 
them.  Indeed,  as  Havelock  Ellis  has  re- 
marked, it  may  almost  be  said  that  we  use 
our  reasoning  powers  more  when  we  dream 
than  when  we  are  awake,  for  the  endless 
and  rapid  succession  of  images  and  ideas 
that  assails  us  in  dreams  is  nothing  but  a 
process  of  reasoning,  a  determined  effort 
"to  argue  out  harmoniously  the  absurdly 
limited  and  incongruous  data  present  to 
sleeping  consciousness."1 

The  difficulty  is  that,  although  we  can 
reason  in  dreams,  we  cannot,  except  to  a 
slight  extent,  utilize  the  critical  faculty 
which  in  the  waking  state  renders  our 

1  "The  World  of  Dreams,"  p.  56. 
41 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

reasoning  effective.  Our  judgment  is,  as 
it  were,  temporarily  atrophied,  while  our 
tendency  to  reason  is  hypertrophied  as  a 
result  of  our  greater  sensitiveness  to  all 
sorts  of  internal  and  external  impressions. 
In  sleep,  as  illustrated  by  my  cat-clawing 
dream,  we  feel  the  need  of  explaining 
matters  to  which,  awake,  we  should  be 
quite  indifferent,  or  which  we  should  in- 
stantly understand  through  the  aid  of  our 
sense  organs.  Lacking  free  and  co-opera- 
tive use  of  these,  we  are  compelled  to 
construct  a  satisfactory  explanation  by  the 
exercise  of  imagination,  a  process  greatly 
furthered  by  the  fact  that  in  sleep  the 
sensations  which  reach  us,  being  cut  off 
and  isolated  from  the  flood  of  sensations 
that  compete  for  our  attention  when  we 
are  awake,  seem  far  more  massive  and 
intense  than  ordinarily. 

Thus  it  comes  about  that,  as  was  long 
since  demonstrated  by  repeated  experi- 
ment, the  slightest  pin-prick,  the  mere 

42 


THE   MIND   IN  SLEEP 

exposure  of  finger  or  toe  to  a  feeble  cur- 
rent of  air,  may  occasion  most  complicated 
and  terrifying  dreams.  Besides  which,  in 
working  out  its  explanation,  the  sleeping 
consciousness  does  so  with  a  rapidity 
greatly  exceeding  that  of  conscious  thought. 
This  statement,  I  am  aware,  is  disputed  by 
at  least  one  of  the  principal  modern  au- 
thorities, on  the  ground  that  "in  all  the 
cases  in  which  the  rapidity  of  the  dream 
process  has  seemed  so  extraordinary  it 
has  merely  been  a  question  of  visual  im- 
agery, and  it  is  obviously  quite  easy  to  see 
in  an  instant  an  elaborate  picture  or  series 
of  pictures  which  it  would  take  a  long  time 
to  describe."  But  it  frequently  is  more 
than  a  matter  of  visual  imagery.  Conver- 
sations are  introduced,  there  is  action  by 
the  dream  personages.  And,  in  any  event, 
when  one  is  awake  it  is  by  no  means  "obvi- 
ously quite  easy  to  see  in  an  instant  an 
elaborate  picture  or  series  of  pictures." 
On  the  contrary,  it  takes  an  appreciable 

43 


SLEEP  AND   SLEEPLESSNESS 

length  of  time  to  see  even  the  outstanding 
details  of  a  small  picture  in  anything  like 
the  fullness  and  vividness  with  which 
dream  images  are  seen. 

As  emphasizing  its  extreme  rapidity 
there  is,  too,  this  peculiarity  in  the  dream 
process,  that  in  many  instances  it  completes 
its  images  and  ideas  before  it  begins  to 
present  them  to  the  dreamer.  That  is  to 
say,  it  works  out  its  story  backwards,  be- 
ginning with  the  climax  and  passing  from 
incident  through  incident  to  the  starting- 
point  at  which  it  first  enters  consciousness 
as  a  dream.  This  is  well  illustrated  by  an 
experience  reported  by  Alfred  Maury,  one 
of  the  earliest  scientific  investigators  of 
the  phenomena  of  sleep,  who  dreamed  that 
he  was  living  in  Paris  during  the  Terror, 
and  had  been  put  on  the  proscribed  list. 
After  many  exciting  adventures,  he  wras 
captured,  tried,  and  sentenced  to  execution. 
He  saw  himself  dragged  through  the  streets 
amid  a  clamoring  multitude  and  forced  to 

44 


THE   MIND   IN  SLEEP 

mount  the  scaffold  and  bare  his  neck  to 
the  fatal  blow.  In  that  instant,  as  the 
guillotine  knife  descended,  he  woke  to  find 
that  a  piece  of  the  cornice  of  his  bed  had 
fallen  and  struck  him  on  the  neck. 

Testifying  even  more  impressively  to  the 
twofold  action  of  the  dream  process  and  to 
its  rapidity  is  a  dream  experience  of  my 
own.  In  this  dream  I  was  walking  alone, 
at  night,  along  a  country  road.  It  was  lined 
on  both  sides  by  trees  which,  as  I  learned 
from  a  man  who  presently  joined  me,  were 
heavily  laden  with  fruit.  I  picked  some 
pears  and  ate  them  as  we  walked  and 
talked.  The  road  seemed  to  overlook  a 
broad  valley,  in  which,  at  perhaps  half  a 
mile's  distance,  I  saw  a  solitary  light.  My 
companion  told  me  that  it  was  in  his  home, 
and  invited  me  to  pass  the  night  with 
him.  After  a  tiring  walk  in  the  dark  across 
meadows,  we  reached  the  house,  a  small 
two-room  cabin.  He  retired  into  the  in- 
ner room,  I  went  to  bed  in  the  outer.  I 

45 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

had  not  been  long  asleep  when,  in  my 
dream,  I  was  awakened  by  the  noise  of 
somebody  running,  and  the  thought  in- 
stantly flashed  into  my  mind  that  my  host 
was  making  off  with  my  money.  I  leaped 
up  shouting:  "Stop!  stop!" 

Then  I  really  awoke,  and  as  I  did  so 
distinctly  heard  on  the  pavement  below 
my  window  the  sound  of  hurried  footfalls 
and  a  voice  crying  excitedly:  "Stop! 
stop!"  At  once  it  was  clear  that  these 
two  words,  penetrating  to  my  sleeping 
consciousness,  had  provided  the  necessary 
stimulus  to  set  up  a  dream  process  which, 
in  the  fraction  of  a  second,  had  interpreted 
them  as  best  it  could  and  had  presented 
the  results  of  its  interpretation  in  the  form 
of  a  curious  little  narrative  of  nocturnal 
adventure. 

More  frequently,  however,  I  believe  it 
is  safe  to  say,  the  dream  excitant  is  con- 
nected directly  with  the  state  of  the  sleeper's 
physical  organism.  Mention  has  already 

46 


THE  MIND  IN  SLEEP 

been  made  of  the  experimental  demonstra- 
tion of  the  ease  with  which  dreams  may  be 
produced  by  the  use  of  artificial  irritants. 
One  sleeper,  whose  nose  was  lightly  tickled 
with  a  feather,  had  a  horrible  dream  of  a 
mask  of  pitch  being  alternately  applied  to 
and  drawn  violently  from  his  face.  An- 
other, at  whose  feet  a  hot-water  bag  was 
placed,  dreamed  that  he  was  walking  over 
hot  lava.  In  a  second  experiment  of  the 
same  sort,  the  accidental  slipping  of  the 
cover  from  the  hot-water  bag  led  to  an 
elaborate  dream  of  capture  and  torture  by 
Rocky  Mountain  bandits,  who  insisted 
that  the  dreamer  knew  how  to  convert 
copper  into  gold,  and  held  his  naked  feet 
in  a  fire  in  order  to  compel  him  to  communi- 
cate his  valuable  secret.  Similarly,  the 
application  of  a  slight  degree  of  heat  to 
the  feet  of  a  patient  with  paralyzed  limbs 
was  followed  by  a  dream  of  being  trans- 
formed into  a  bear  and  taught  to  dance 
by  being  placed  on  red-hot  iron  plates. 

47 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

One's  position  in  bed,  the  state  of  one's 
digestion,  the  quantity  of  one's  bed-clothing 
-  all  these  play  a  part  in  the  development 
of  dreams,  especially  "nightmares"  and 
the  common  dreams  of  falling,  flying,  going 
about  in  scanty  attire,  etc.  Concerning 
such  dreams  I  cannot  say  much  from  per- 
sonal experience.  To  the  best  of  my  rec- 
ollection I  have  never  had  —  unless  it 
were  subconsciously  —  either  the  flying,  or 
the  falling  dream,  and  only  once  the  dream 
of  appearing  in  public  in  garb  better  suited 
to  the  bedchamber.  But  most  people  do 
have  them,  and  there  would  seem  to  be  no 
doubt  that  they  have  a  common  origin  in 
physical  conditions. 

The  falling  dream,  for  example,  is  doubt- 
less attributable,  as  is  popularly  believed, 
to  some  slight  gastric  disturbance  affecting 
the  heart's  action.  As  to  the  flying  dream, 
the  most  reasonable  theory,  it  seems  to 
me,  is  one  recently  advanced  by  Havelock 
Ellis  on  the  strength  of  a  picturesque  dream 

48 


THE   MIND   IN   SLEEP 

in  which,  instead  of  the  dreamer  flying 
himself,  as  is  usual,  he  saw  another  person 
flying. 

"I  dreamed,"  Mr.  Ellis  reports,  "that 
I  was  watching  a  girl  acrobat,  in  appro- 
priate costume,  who  was  rhythmically  ris- 
ing to  a  great  height  in  the  air  and  then 
falling,  without  touching  the  floor,  though 
each  time  she  appeared  quite  close  to  it. 
At  last  she  ceased,  exhausted  and  perspir- 
ing, and  I  had  to  lead  her  away.  Her 
movements  were  not  controlled  by  mechan- 
ism, and  apparently  I  did  not  regard 
mechanism  as  necessary.  It  was  a  vivid 
dream,  and  I  awoke  with  a  distinct  sense 
of  oppression  in  the  chest. 

"In  trying  to  account  for  this  dream, 
...  it  occurred  to  me  that  probably  I 
had  here  the  key  to  a  great  group  of  dreams. 
The  rhythmic  rising  and  falling  of  the 
acrobat  was  simply  the  objectivation  of 
the  rhythmic  rising  and  falling  of  my  own 
respiratory  muscles  —  in  some  dreams  per- 

49 


SLEEP  AND   SLEEPLESSNESS 

haps  of  the  systole  and  diastole  of  the 
heart's  muscles  —  under  the  influence  of 
some  slight  and  unknown  physical  oppres- 
sion. .  .  .  There  is,  moreover,  another 
element  entering  into  the  problem  of  noc- 
turnal aviation :  the  state  of  the  skin  sen- 
sations. Respiratory  activity  alone  would 
scarcely  suffice  to  produce  the  imagery  of 
flight  if  sensations  of  tactile  pressure  re- 
mained to  suggest  contact  with  the  earth. 
In  dreams,  however,  the  sense  of  movement 
suggested  by  respiratory  activity  is  un- 
accompanied by  the  tactile  pressure  pro- 
duced by  boots  or  the  contact  of  the  ground 
with  the  soles  of  the  feet."1 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  these  com- 
mon dreams  of  falling,  flying,  and  the  like 
are  constant  in  their  details.  Everybody 
who  has  experienced  them  knows  that 
their  setting  and  incidents  are  likely  to  be 
different  in  every  dream.  But  their  prin- 
cipal feature,  the  sensation  of  falling  or 

! "The  World  of  Dreams,"  pp,  134-137, 
$9 


THE  MIND  IN  SLEEP 

flying,  is  always  present  in  one  form  or 
another;  and  there  often  is  present,  as 
in  the  dream  just  cited,  a  strong  element 
of  symbolism.  This  element,  again,  is  the 
most  conspicuous  feature  in  recurrent 
dreams  stimulated,  like  my  dream  experi- 
ence with  the  cat,  by  the  organic  changes 
involved  in  the  development  of  some  dis- 
ease. Just  how  far  this  fact  may  be  turned 
to  advantage  by  medical  science  it  is  as 
yet  impossible  to  say,  for  the  investigation 
of  this  phase  of  dreaming  is  only  fairly 
under  way.  I  would  add  that,  as  a  means 
of  contributing  to  its  progress,  I  should 
be  glad  to  receive  from  any  of  my  readers 
statements  regarding  the  character  and 
frequency  of  dreams  that  may  have  come 
to  them  immediately  prior  to  an  illness. 

Certainly  sufficient  information  has  al- 
ready been  brought  together  to  justify  the 
assertion  that  several  maladies  of  a  slowly 
progressive  nature  —  such  as  cancer,  tuber- 
culosis, some  forms  of  heart  disease,  and 

51 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

various  nervous  and  mental  maladies  - 
sometimes  manifest  their  presence,  before 
the  physical  symptoms  of  disease  appear, 
by  the  recurrence  of  symbolic  dreams. 
Thus  not  a  few  persons  suffering  from  heart 
disease  have  testified  that  before  their 
ailment  had  developed  so  that  they  were 
really  conscious  of  it,  they  had  dreams  of 
toiling  and  sweating  up  a  high  hill,  or  of 
seeing  others  climb  great  heights  with 
much  difficulty.  Malignant  disease  of  the 
stomach  is  known  in  some  cases  to  have 
been  ushered  in  by  dreams  of  mice  or  other 
small  animals  gnawing  at  the  abdomen. 
And,  so  far  as  concerns  nervous  and  mental 
disorders,  knowledge  of  the  part  played  by 
dreams  in  their  symptomatology  is  even 
to-day  so  far  advanced  that  many  neurolo- 
gists and  psychiatrists  carefully  analyze 
their  patients'  dreams  as  a  help  both  in 
diagnosis  and  treatment. 

Accordingly,  without  wishing   to   create 
undue  feelings  of  alarm  or  to  encourage 

52 


THE   MIND   IN  SLEEP 

morbid  introspection,  I  am  strongly  of  the 
opinion  that  any  one  who  experiences  an 
often  recurring  dream  which  seems  to 
localize  in  its  action  some  organ  of  the  body, 
will  do  well  to  consult  a  competent  physi- 
cian. No  harm  will  be  done  if  his  examina- 
tion discloses  no  malady,  or  one  so  slight 
as  scarcely  to  require  attention.  Whereas 
great  benefit  must  follow  if,  as  a  result  of 
the  dream's  indication,  the  physician  suc- 
ceeds in  detecting  at  an  early  and  reme- 
diable stage  some  disease  of  real  gravity. 
Dreams,  to  repeat,  in  most  cases,  though 
I  believe  not  all,  represent  nothing  more 
than  an  effort  on  the  part  of  the  sleeping 
consciousness  to  interpret  external  or  in- 
ternal physical  stimuli.  But  in  saying 
this  I  would  have  it  well  understood  that 
I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  we  have  here 
a  sufficient  explanation  of  dreams.  We 
have  still  to  account  for  their  contents,  a 
very  different  problem,  and  one  that  until 
the  past  few  years  has  been  ignored  by 

53 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

most  students,  who  have  thereby  missed 
making  some  of  the  most  important  and 
practically  helpful  discoveries  connected 
with  the  phenomena  of  dreaming.  To 
say  that  the  dream  excitant,  the  physical 
stimulus,  accounts  for  the  dream  itself  is 
equivalent  to  saying  that  the  crack  of  the 
starter's  pistol  accounts  for  the  result  of 
a  boat  race.  Whence  come  the  details 
with  which  a  dream  is  crowded?  Why 
does  a  similar  stimulus  frequently  —  nay, 
usually  —  provoke  in  one  man  a  dream 
differing  profoundly  in  its  imagery  from 
that  which  it  provokes  in  another?  What 
are  the  laws  governing  the  selection  and 
presentation  of  dream  images  in  the  inter- 
pretative process?  Such  are  some  of  the 
questions  yet  to  be  answered,  and  the 
answers  to  them  can  be  found  only  in 
the  psychological,  not  the  physiological, 
domain. 

One    fact    which    immediately    obtrudes 
itself  when  we  begin  to  study  dreams  from 
54 


THE   MIND   IN  SLEEP 

the  standpoint  of  their  contents  is  the 
interesting  circumstance  that,  nine  times 
out  of  ten,  they  are  woven  out  of  and 
around  waking  experiences  of  the  previous 
day ;  and,  furthermore,  that  the  experi- 
ences thus  utilized  for  dream  material  are 
not,  as  a  rule,  those  which  have  consciously 
impressed  us  most,  but  experiences  so 
trivial  that  we  have  given  them  little 
thought.  They  are  not,  to  be  sure,  utilized 
in  precisely  the  form  in  which  we  originally 
experienced  them.  Rather,  they  reappear 
as  suggestions  giving  direction  and  color 
and  tone  to  the  dream  story.  To  the 
truth  of  this  all  who  have  analyzed  their 
dreams  and  reported  on  them  bear  unani- 
mous testimony. 

To  cite  a  few  illustrative  instances  that 
will  make  my  meaning  perfectly  clear,  a 
lady  who,  in  the  course  of  the  day,  had 
admired  a  friend's  baby  and  bought  a 
codfish  for  dinner,  dreamed  that  night  of 
finding  a  live  baby  sewed  up  in  a  big  fish. 

55 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

Another  lady,  having  business  during  the 
day  partly  in  the  hen-yard  and  partly  in 
the  garden,  had  a  grotesque  dream  of 
breeding  chickens  by  planting  hens'  heads. 
A  college  student,  after  attending  a  per- 
formance of  "The  Merchant  of  Venice," 
was  tormented  by  a  nightmare  in  which 
all  his  instructors  imposed  on  him  exces- 
sive tasks,  the  dream  reaching  a  climax  - 
and  an  awakening  —  when  one  of  the  larg- 
est members  of  the  faculty,  angered  at 
his  refusal  to  do  the  work  assigned  him, 
drew  a  huge  knife  and  began  to  whet  it 
on  his  boot  in  the  manner  of  Shylock. 

More  elaborate,  yet  equally  founded  on 
trivial  incidents  of  waking  life,  was  the 
dream  of  a  fourth  sleeper.  In  his  dream, 
which  I  cite  on  the  authority  of  Professor 
Jastrow,1  he  was  alone  in  a  room  with  a 
corpse,  a  situation  not  at  all  to  his  liking. 
He  started  to  leave,  but  was  stopped  by  an 
elderly  woman,  who  shut  and  locked  the 

J  "The  Subconscious,"  p.  209. 
56 


THE   MIND   IN  SLEEP 

door.  After  a  time  she  herself  entered  the 
room  with  a  small  box  in  her  hand,  saying: 
"Please  give  me  something  to  help  bury 
my  poor  husband."  At  this  there  was  a  com- 
motion in  the  coffin,  the  "dead"  man  sat 
up,  and  he,  the  elderly  woman,  and  the 
terror-stricken  visitor  began  a  conversation. 
On  awaking  the  dreamer  readily  traced  the 
dream  to  two  incidents  of  no  importance 
to  him.  He  had  read  in  his  newspaper  that 
evening  a  paragraph  about  the  burial  alive 
of  a  man  supposed  to  be  dead,  and  later  in 
the  evening  he  had  been  asked  by  a  lady 
to  contribute  to  a  missionary  fund.  These 
incidents  had  supplied  the  material  of  his 
dream ;  the  stimulus  producing  it  was  in 
all  probability  some  temporary  disorder 
of  the  digestive  apparatus. 

My  own  experience  is  much  the  same. 
For  some  years  I  have  made  it  a  practice 
to  analyze  my  dreams  if  they  are  unusually 
vivid,  and,  while  I  cannot  always  trace 
their  contents  to  suggestions  and  associa- 

57 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

tions  derived  from  incidents  of  the  pre- 
vious day,  in  most  cases  I  find  that  such 
has  been  their  source.  I  remember  one 
extremely  complicated  yet  fairly  coherent 
dream  in  which  I  was  voyaging  through 
the  South  Sea  Islands  in  company  with  a 
couple  of  sailors.  We  were  shipwrecked, 
but  managed  to  land  on  an  island,  where 
we  were  attacked  by  a  number  of  monkeys, 
which,  to  our  amazement,  presently  turned 
into  a  regiment  of  Moors.  This  last  part 
of  the  dream  and  the  presence  of  the  sailors 
I  could  easily  understand,  for  I  had  that 
afternoon  been  reading  a  history  of  the 
campaigns  of  the  American  navy  against 
the  Barbary  corsairs.  But  the  monkey 
element  remained  unintelligible  until  I 
suddenly  remembered  that  after  reading 
the  naval  history  I  had  dipped  for  a  few 
minutes  into  a  critique  of  the  evolutionary 
theory. 

I  find,  in  fact,  that  my  reading  supplies 
the  material  for  a  large  proportion  of  my 

58 


THE   MIND   IN  SLEEP 

dreams,  and  that  many  others  are  trace- 
able to  allusions  in  conversation  to  per- 
sons and  topics  which  are  of  no  great 
interest  to  me.  One  of  the  most  peculiar 
dreams  that  I  can  recollect  was  built  around 
a  chance  reference  by  a  carriage-driver  to 
the  fact  that  an  acquaintance  of  mine  — 
a  man  in  whom  I  have  no  special  interest 
—  once  lived  in  the  New  Hampshire  town 
where  I  was  making  my  summer  home. 
Sometimes,  it  is  true,  my  dreams  are  mani- 
festly rooted  in  incidents  that  have  made  a 
deep  impression.  But  this  is  the  exception 
to  the  rule,  and  I  am  sure  that  I  am  not 
different  from  other  persons  in  this  respect. 
The  problem  remains,  of  course,  to  deter- 
mine just  why  trivial  incidents  should  pre- 
dominate in  dream  formation. 

In  solving  this  problem,  as  in  solving 
so  many  other  problems  in  normal  psy- 
chology, recourse  must  be  had  to  certain 
facts  lately  brought  to  light  by  those  whose 
special  business  it  is  to  investigate  the 

50 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

workings  of  the  mind  under  abnormal 
conditions.  Of  such  facts  the  most  im- 
portant in  the  present  connection  is  the 
persistence,  in  the  way  of  subconscious 
memories,  of  long-forgotten  happenings 
having  a  profound  emotional  significance 
—  frights,  griefs,  worries,  shocks  of  various 
kinds,  secret  desires,  and  so  forth.  These 
subconscious  memories  —  which  form,  to- 
gether with  their  emotional  coloring,  what 
is  technically  called  a  "complex" — are 
to-day  known  to  constitute  an  important 
factor  in  the  causation  of  many  nervous 
and  mental  diseases,  particularly  hysteria 
and  other  psychoneuroses. 

The  theory,  first  advanced  by  the  Vien- 
nese psychopathologist  Sigmund  Freud,  is 
that  the  memories  in  question  are  forgotten 
by  the  upper  consciousness  simply  because 
they  are  of  a  painful  character,  or  of  a 
character  otherwise  incompatible  with  the 
best  interests  of  the  one  who  experienced 
them.  But,  although  thus  repressed  and 

60 


THE  MIND   IN  SLEEP 

thrust  from  consciousness,  they  are  far 
from  being  blotted  out.  Subconsciously 
they  remain  as  vivid  and  intense  as  when 
first  experienced ;  and,  in  addition,  they 
perpetually  seek  to  assert  themselves  and 
appear  once  more  in  the  field  of  conscious 
memory.  Such  is  the  human  constitution, 
however,  that  they  can  do  this  only  on 
condition  of  being  so  transformed  that 
the  upper  consciousness  shall  not  recognize 
them  for  what  they  really  are. 

One  form  of  transformation,  in  the  case 
of  persons  predisposed  by  conditions  of 
heredity  and  environment,  is  into  the 
symptoms  of  hysteria.  Or,  as  Freud  him- 
self would  say,  hysterical  symptoms  are 
so  many  monuments  to  subconsciously 
remembered  emotional  experiences.  In  the 
case  of  normal  persons  the  process  of 
transformation  does  not  involve  such  violent 
manifestations  of  the  underlying  psychic 
energy,  which  "works  itself  off"  quite 
peacefully  by  various  channels,  and  notably 

61 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

through  the  medium  of  dreams.  In  truth, 
every  dream,  according  to  the  theory  of 
Freud,  is  symbolical,  and  on  close  analysis 
will  be  found  related  to,  and  expressive  of, 
some  secret,  subconscious  emotional  com- 
plex. Besides  which,  Freud  finds  a  strong 
"wish"  element  in  all  dreams,  and  has 
even  ventured  to  sum  up  his  theory  of 
dreams  in  the  single  formula : 

Every  dream  at  bottom  represents  the 
imaginary  fulfillment  of  an  ungratified 
wish.1 

Now,  while  I  am  not  prepared  to  indorse 
the  Freudian  hypothesis  in  its  entirety,  and 
while  I  am  inclined  to  agree  with  Morton 
Prince,  Boris  Sidis,  and  Havelock  Ellis 
in  holding  that  Freud,  as  regards  both 
hysteria  and  dreams,  has  allowed  the  pas- 
sion for  generalization  to  carry  him  to  a 
rash  extreme,  I  am  nevertheless  convinced 

1  The  Freudian  theory  of  dreams,  together  with  its  practical 
implications,  will  be  found  worked  out  in  detail  in  Doctor  Coriat's 
contribution  to  this  series  of  handbooks,  "The  Meaning  of 
Dreams." 

62 


THE   MIND   IN  SLEEP 

that  he  has  furnished  the  necessary  clue  to 
the  solution  of  the  problem  immediately 
before  us  —  the  problem  of  the  strange  in- 
fluence exercised  over  our  dreams  by  trivial 
incidents  of  the  waking  state. 

It  is  all  a  matter  of  "association  of 
ideas,"  and  trivial  incidents,  being  numer- 
ically far  in  excess  of  important  ones,  are 
proportionately  more  likely  to  affect  by 
association  some  buried  complex  which, 
unable  to  cross  the  threshold  of  conscious- 
ness in  its  true  form,  finds  expression, 
during  sleep,  in  the  presentation  of  dream 
images  centering  about  the  incident  that 
has  excited  it  into  activity.  During  the 
day  I  do  a  hundred  and  one  things;  I 
talk  with  many  people.  Somebody  casu- 
ally mentions  to  me  the  name  of  John 
Smith,  and  that  night  I  have  a  vivid  dream 
with  John  Smith  figuring  in  it.  It  is  not 
because  I  am  very  much  interested  in  him 
that  I  dream  about  him;  I  may  not  have 
a  speaking  acquaintance  with  him.  I 

63 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

dream  about  him  because  the  mention  of 
his  name  has,  consciously  or  subconsciously, 
stirred  within  me,  by  association  of  ideas, 
a  memory  of  some  one  or  some  thing  that 
is,  or  was  once,  of  keen  emotional  signifi- 
cance to  me. 

There  are  dreams,  it  should  be  added, 
in  which  the  buried  complex  does  manage 
to  show  itself  directly  to  the  dreamer ;  but 
dreams  of  this  type  are  mostly  forgotten 
on  awaking,  and  can  be  recalled  only  by 
the  use  of  hypnotism  or  some  other  method 
of  reaching  into  the  subconscious.  That 
they  are  often  worth  recalling  every 
psychopathologist  will  testify,  for  in  a 
number  of  cases  they  have  been  the  only 
means  of  ascertaining  the  true  cause  of 
symptoms  for  which  patients  have  long 
sought  relief  in  vain.  In  like  manner, 
the  analysis  of  consciously  remembered 
dreams,  no  matter  how  absurd  they  super- 
ficially seem,  often  results  in  unearthing 
the  complexes  responsible  for  hysterical 

04 


THE   MIND   IN  SLEEP 

symptoms,  and  impressively  corroborates 
the  view  just  set  forth.  In  every  case 
where  psychological  analysis  is  employed 
on  neurotic  patients  it  is  found  that  their 
dreams  are  fundamentally  connected  with 
the  emotional  disturbances  to  which  their 
nervous  and  mental  troubles  are  due. 

To  summarize,  then,  it  may  be  said 
that  in  the  ordinary,  average  dream,  with 
which  alone  we  are  here  concerned,  there 
is  always  an  initial  physical  stimulus, 
whether  internal  or  external,  to  give  occa- 
sion to  the  dream ;  that  the  dream  repre- 
sents an  effort  to  interpret  this  stimulus ; 
and  that  the  manner  of  the  interpretation 
—  the  story  the  dream  tells  —  is  ultimately 
determined,  not  by  the  stimulus  itself,  but 
by  the  character  of  the  emotional  com- 
plexes that  have  been  roused  to  greatest 
activity  by  incidents  of  the  waking  life  of 
the  previous  day. 


CHAPTER   III 
Dreams  and  the  Supernatural 

NO  account  of  the  state  of  the  mind 
in  sleep  would  be  complete  with- 
out an  analysis  of  certain  ex- 
ceptional types  of  dream  which  seemingly 
are  not  to  be  explained  in  accordance  with 
the  principles  stated  above,  and  the  con- 
tents of  which  are  such  as  to  give  rise  to  a 
widespread  belief  that  there  is  something 
supernatural  in  them.  There  are  dreams, 
for  example,  in  which  notable  conceptions 
in  art,  literature,  or  science  are  presented 
to  the  dreamer,  and  remembered  by  him 
with  such  clearness  that  they  may  be  after- 
wards converted  into  permanent  products 
of  the  mind.  There  are  other  dreams  in 
which  problems  that  have  baffled  the 
dreamer's  earnest  endeavor  while  awake 

66 


DREAMS  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

are  instantaneously  and  often  most  dramati- 
cally solved  for  him  while  he  sleeps.  Akin 
to  these  are  dreams  in  which  the  hiding- 
places  of  lost  articles  are  mysteriously 
made  known.  And,  finally,  there  are 
dreams  in  which  information  is  gained 
of  events  occurring  at  a  distance  from  the 
dreamer,  and  sometimes  of  events  whose 
occurrence  is  still  a  thing  of  the  future. 

Of  these  four  classes  of  unusual  dreams, 
an  abundance  of  instances  might  be  men- 
tioned. It  is  well  known  that  the  late 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson  obtained  through 
dreams  the  plots  for  some  of  his  best  stories, 
including  the  weird  but  immortal  "Dr. 
Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde"  ;  Coleridge's  "Kubla 
Khan"  is  another  famous  dream  composi- 
tion; while  Tartini's  "Devil's  Sonata" 
was  the  result  of  a  dream  in  which  the  devil 
appeared  to  Tartini  and  played  the  sonata 
to  which  the  composer  gave  that  name. 
The  same  element  of  dramatic  impersona- 
tion appears  even  more  strikingly  in  the 

67 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

singular  experience  of  Professor  H.  V. 
Hilprecht,  to  whom  there  was  revealed 
in  sleep  the  solution  of  a  seemingly  in- 
soluble archaeological  problem.  Professor 
Hilprecht's  account  of  his  dream  has  often 
been  quoted,  but  it  is  so  much  to  the  point 
in  the  present  connection  that  it  will  bear 
repetition : 

"One  Saturday  evening  about  the  middle 
of  March,  1893,"  he  says,  "I  had  been 
wearying  myself,  as  I  had  done  so  often  in 
the  weeks  preceding,  in  the  vain  attempt 
to  decipher  two  small  fragments  of  agate 
which  were  supposed  to  belong  to  the  finger- 
rings  of  some  Babylonian.  The  labor  was 
much  increased  by  the  fact  that  the  frag- 
ments presented  remnants  only  of  characters 
and  lines,  that  dozens  of  similar  small 
fragments  had  been  found  in  the  ruins  of 
the  temple  of  Bel  at  Nippur  with  which 
nothing  could  be  done,  and  that  in  this 
case,  furthermore,  I  had  never  had  the 
originals  before  me,  but  only  a  hasty  sketch 

68 


DREAMS  AND  THE   SUPERNATURAL 

made  by  one  of  the  members  of  the  expedi- 
tion sent  by  the  University  of  Pennsylvania 
to  Babylonia.  I  could  not  say  more  than 
that  the  fragments,  taking  into  considera- 
tion the  place  in  which  they  were  found  and 
the  peculiar  characteristics  of  the  cunei- 
form characters  preserved  upon  them, 
sprang  from  the  Cassite  period  of  Baby- 
lonian history  (about  1700-1140  B.C.). 
Moreover,  as  the  first  character  of  the  third 
line  seemed  to  be  KU,  I  ascribed  this 
fragment,  with  an  interrogation  point,  to 
King  Kurigalzu,  while  I  placed  the  other 
fragment,  as  unclassifiable,  with  other  Cas- 
site fragments,  upon  a  page  of  my  book 
where  I  published  the  unclassifiable  frag- 
ments. The  proofs  already  lay  before  me, 
but  I  was  far  from  satisfied. 

"The  whole  problem  passed  yet  again 
through  my  mind  that  March  evening 
before  I  placed  my  mark  of  approval  under 
the  last  correction  in  the  book.  Even  then 
I  had  come  to  no  conclusion.  About 

69 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

midnight,  weary  and  exhausted,  I  went 
to  bed,  and  was  soon  in  deep  sleep.  Then 
I  dreamed  this  remarkable  dream : 

"A  tall,  thin  priest  of  the  old  pre-Chris- 
tian Nippur,  about  forty  years  of  age,  and 
clad  in  a  simple  abba,  led  me  to  the  treasure 
chamber  of  the  temple,  on  its  southeast 
side.  He  went  with  me  into  a  small,  low- 
ceiled  room  without  windows,  in  which 
there  was  a  large  wooden  chest,  while 
scraps  of  agate  and  lapis  lazuli  lay  scattered 
on  the  floor.  Here  he  addressed  me  as 
follows : 

'These  two  fragments  which  you  have 
published  separately  upon  pages  22  and  26 
belong  together,  are  not  finger-rings,  and 
their  history  is  as  follows :  King  Kurigalzu 
(about  1300  B.C.)  once  sent  to  the  temple  of 
Bel,  among  other  articles  of  agate  and  lapis 
lazuli,  an  inscribed  votive  cylinder  of  agate. 
Then  we  priests  suddenly  received  the  com- 
mand to  make  for  the  statue  of  the  god 
Ninib  a  pair  of  earrings  of  agate.  We  were 

70 


DREAMS  AND   THE   SUPERNATURAL 

in  great  dismay,  since  there  was  no  agate  as 
raw  material  at  hand.  In  order  to  execute 
the  command  there  was  nothing  for  us  to  do 
but  cut  the  votive  cylinder  into  three  parts, 
thus  making  three  rings,  each  of  which  con- 
tained a  portion  of  the  original  inscription. 
The  first  two  rings  served  as  earrings  for 
the  statue  of  the  god ;  the  two  fragments 
which  have  given  you  so  much  trouble  are 
portions  of  them.  If  you  will  put  the  two 
together,  you  will  have  confirmation  of  my 
words.  But  the  third  ring  you  have  not 
yet  found  in  the  course  of  your  excavations, 
and  you  will  never  find  it.' 

"With  this  the  priest  disappeared.  I 
awoke  at  once,  and  immediately  told  my 
wife  the  dream,  that  I  might  not  forget  it. 
Next  morning  —  Sunday  —  I  examined 
the  fragments  once  more  in  the  light  of 
these  disclosures,  and  to  my  astonishment 
found  all  the  details  of  the  dream  precisely 
verified,  in  so  far  as  the  means  of  verifica- 
tion were  in  my  hands.  The  original 

71 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

inscription  on  the  votive  cylinder  read,  'To 
the  god  Ninib,  son  of  Bel,  his  lord,  has 
Kurigalzu,  pontifex  of  Bel,  presented  this.' 5>1 
The  solving  of  mathematical  problems  in 
sleep  would  seem  to  be  of  especially  fre- 
quent occurrence.  I  know  of  one  case  in 
which  a  stiff  problem  in  differential  calculus 
was  worked  out  in  a  dream.  An  English 
engineer,  Mr.  F.  J.  Jones,  has  reported  that 
he  once  dreamed  the  answer,  "a  number 
with  several  places  of  decimals,"  to  a  prob- 
lem which  had  long  baffled  him.  In 
another  case  a  business  man  who  had  been 
trying  for  two  months  to  correct  an  error 
in  his  cash  accounts  had  a  vivid  dream  in 
which  the  mistake  was  shown  to  be  due  to 
a  complicated  cross-entry.  While  still 
asleep  he  got  out  of  bed  and  made  a  memor- 
andum on  a  slip  of  paper,  for  the  purpose 
of  helping  him  to  make  the  necessary  cor- 
rection the  next  day.  Oddly  enough,  when 

1  Proceeding!  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research,  vol.  XII,  pp. 
14-15. 

72 


DREAMS  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

he  awoke  in  the  morning,  he  forgot  all 
about  the  dream  and  the  memorandum. 
But  that  evening,  while  shaving  for  dinner, 
he  chanced  to  pick  up  the  slip  to  wipe  his 
razor,  saw  the  memorandum  on  it,  and  at 
once  remembered  his  dream. 

"The  effect  on  me,"  he  states,  "was  such 
that  I  returned  to  our  office  and  turned  to 
the  cash-book,  where  I  found  that  I  had 
really,  when  asleep,  detected  the  error 
which  I  could  not  detect  in  my  waking 
hours,  and  had  actually  jotted  it  down."1 

Sometimes  the  dream  action  involves,  at 
one  and  the  same  time,  the  solving  of  a 
problem  and  an  actual  work  of  creation. 
I  cite  from  my  recently  published  book, 
" Ad ven tarings  in  the  Psychical,"  a  typical 
case  communicated  to  me  by  the  dreamer 
himself,  Mr.  B.  J.  S.  Cahill,  a  leading  Pacific 
Coast  architect. 

Mr.    Cahill  had   been   commissioned   to 

1  Proceedings  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research,  vol.  VIII,  p. 
395. 

73 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

design  a  twenty-six-story  office  building, 
to  be  erected  in  Portland,  Oregon,  and  he 
determined,  if  possible,  to  plan  one  that 
would  be  a  real  contribution  towards  the 
solution  of  some  of  the  most  difficult  prob- 
lems of  modern  commercial  architecture. 
For  weeks  he  labored  hard  to  devise  a 
building  that  would  unite  a  maximum  of 
beauty,  solidity,  and  capacity,  with  an 
abundance  and  as  nearly  as  possible  an 
equality  of  light  and  air  for  the  many  offices 
it  was  to  contain.  The  structure  he  ulti- 
mately conceived  was  certainly  novel,  and 
differed  conspicuously  from  the  ordinary 
four-sided  office  building,  with  its  inner 
offices  lighted  from  a  court. 

His  plan  called  for  the  construction  of  a 

building  shaped  much  like  a  St.  Andrew's 

cross,  or  like  a  square  with  a  triangle  cut 

\    out  of  each  side.     In  this  way  the  need  for 

an  inner  court  was  completely  obviated, 

and  the  only  poorly  ventilated  and  dimly 

lighted  portion  of  the  building  would  be  its 

74 


DREAMS  AND  THE   SUPERNATURAL 

central  "  core."  Here  the  elevators  and 
stairs  were  to  be  located. 

According  to  the  architect's  own  state- 
ment, this  plan  —  which  was  highly  praised 
by  so  eminent  a  critic  as  Mr.  Montgomery 
Schuyler  —  was  born  in  his  mind  while  he 
slept.  One  night  he  saw  in  a  dream  a  build- 
ing shaped  in  this  fashion,  and  knew  that 
his  problem  was  solved.  He  tells  me  that 
on  awaking  he  made  two  rough  sketches 
of  the  plan  in  a  pocket  note-book — one 
showing  the  general  design,  the  other  in- 
dicating the  appearance  of  the  building 
when  completed. 

As  to  the  revelation  in  dream  of  the 
whereabouts  of  lost  articles,  I  would  also 
cite  from  my  book,  "  Adventurings  in  the 
Psychical,"  an  exceptionally  interesting  case 
reported  to  me  by  a  young  lady  attending 
college  at  Greeley,  Colorado.  Her  father 
had  sent  her  a  check,  which  for  a  day  or 
two  she  delayed  cashing.  Then,  being 
without  money,  she  looked  for  it  in  the  place 

75 


SLEEP  AND   SLEEPLESSNESS 

where  she  supposed  she  had  put  it,  but,  to 
her  dismay,  discovered  that  it  was  not  there. 
A  thorough  search  of  her  room  failed  to 
bring  it  to  light,  and,  as  it  was  not  a  personal 
check  of  her  father's,  she  was  greatly 
worried,  thinking  that  it  might  be  impossi- 
ble to  duplicate  it. 

A  couple  of  nights  later  she  had  a  curious 
dream  in  which  she  saw  herself  standing  in 
front  of  a  bookcase  in  the  college  library. 
On  a  certain  shelf  were  five  books,  one 
bound  in  blue,  another  in  yellow,  and  be- 
tween them  three  with  a  white  binding. 
She  took  down  one  of  the  white-covered 
volumes,  opened  it  idly,  and  in  the  middle 
of  the  book  found  her  check. 

Next  morning  she  awoke  with  no  memory 
of  the  dream,  nor  did  she  recall  it  when,  later 
in  the  day,  she  visited  the  college  library 
and  came  across  this  identical  placing  of 
books.  It  recurred  to  her  only  when  she 
glanced  into  one  of  the  white-covered 
volumes.  Feeling  rather  "  foolish  "  and  also 
76 


DREAMS  AND   THE  SUPERNATURAL 

not  a  little  apprehensive,  she  took  down  a 
second  volume  of  the  same  set,  opened  it, 
and  there,  sure  enough,  was  the  missing 
check ! 

On  the  same  order  is  a  dream  reported 
from  Guilford,  Vermont,  to  the  late  Pro- 
fessor James.  In  this  instance  the  dreamer, 
Mr.  J.  L.  Squires,  was  a  young  man  in  the 
employment  of  a  Guilford  farmer,  T.  L. 
Johnson.  Narrating  his  singular  experience 
to  Professor  James,  Mr.  Squires  said : 

"In  the  month  of  September,  1887,  I 
was  about  one  mile  from  the  farm  buildings 
with  a  young  man  named  Wesley  Davis  — 
with  whom  I  had  for  several  years  been 
acquainted,  and  who  had  been  working 
with  me  for  several  months  at  said  John- 
son's —  looking  after  some  cattle  that  had 
strayed  from  a  pasture.  The  cattle, 
eighteen  or  twenty  head,  were  found  in  a 
large  mow  lot,  and,  seeing  us,  started  to 
run  away  in  a  direction  opposite  to  that  in 
which  we  wished  to  drive  them. 

77 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

"In  order  to  head  off  the  cattle  and  turn 
them  back,  Davis  ran  one  way  and  I  the 
other,  and  while  running  Davis  lost  his 
watch  and  chain  from  his  vest  pocket,  but 
did  not  discover  his  loss  until  eight  or  nine 
o'clock  that  night,  when  it  was,  of  course, 
too  late  to  search  for  it.  Believing  that  he 
must  have  lost  the  watch  while  engaged  in 
getting  the  cattle  back  into  the  pasture, 
Davis  and  myself  returned  to  the  place 
the  next  morning  and  looked  for  the  watch 
all  the  forenoon. 

"Not  having  any  idea  of  the  probable 
locality  in  which  the  watch  was  lost,  and 
not  being  at  all  certain  that  it  was  lost  while 
after  the  cattle,  we  did  not  succeed  in  find- 
ing it,  although  we  searched  for  it  until 
twelve  o'clock.  The  watch  was  one  that 
Davis  had  for  some  time,  and  he  was  much 
attached  to  it,  and  felt  very  badly  about 
his  loss.  He  worked  hard  for  his  living, 
and  could  not  afford  to  lose  the  watch,  for 
which  he  had  paid  twenty-five  dollars.  I 

78 


DREAMS  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

felt  sorry  for  him,  and  thought  about  the 
watch  continually  all  the  afternoon  after 
we  returned  from  looking  for  it,  and  was 
still  thinking  of  it  when  I  went  to  sleep 
that  night. 

"During  my  sleep,  at  what  hour  I  could 
not  tell,  I  saw  the  watch  as  it  lay  upon 
the  ground  in  the  mow  lot,  over  a  mile 
away.  It  was  in  grass  at  least  ten  inches 
high.  The  face  of  the  watch  was  turned 
up,  and  the  small  steel  chain  which  was 
attached  to  it  lay  like  a  curve  in  a  half 
circle.  About  three  feet  from  the  watch 
was  a  large  spot  where  the  grass  had  been 
crushed  and  matted  by  a  creature  lying 
down ;  about  ten  rods  to  the  north  was  a 
brush  fence ;  about  ten  or  twelve  feet  to 
the  eastward  of  the  watch  was  a  granite 
cobblestone  one  or  two  feet  in  diameter, 
which  lay  about  half  out  of  the  ground. 

"When  I  awoke  the  next  morning,  which 
was  Sunday,  I  felt  as  certain  that  I  could 
go  straight  to  the  watch  as  if  I  had  really 

79 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

seen  it,  and  told  Davis  so,  and  tried  to 
have  him  go  out  and  get  it.  He  had  no 
faith  in  my  'vision/  'dream/  or  whatever 
it  may  be  called,  and  would  not  go.  In 
spite  of  the  jests  and  laughter  of  the  entire 
family,  I  saddled  a  horse  and  went  directly 
to  the  watch,  which  I  found  with  all  its 
surroundings  exactly  as  I  had  seen  it.  I 
was  not  nearer  than  forty  rods  to  Davis 
when  the  watch  was  lost,  as  I  ascertained 
after  it  was  found. 

"The  watch  had  run  down  and  stopped, 
the  hands  pointing  to  9.40  o'clock,  which 
I  also  noted  in  my  dream." 

Compare  with  this  the  following  state- 
ment communicated  to  the  American 
Society  for  Psychical  Research  by  Profes- 
sor Josiah  Royce,  of  Harvard  University, 
as  coming  from  a  trustworthy  lady  of  his 
acquaintance : 

"A  number  of  years  ago  I  was  invited  to 
visit  a  friend  who  lived  at  a  large  and  beau- 
tiful country-seat  on  the  Hudson.  Shortly 

80 


DREAMS  AND   THE  SUPERNATURAL 

after  my  arrival  I  started,  with  a  number  of 
other  guests,  to  make  a  tour  of  the  very 
extensive  grounds.  We  walked  for  an  hour 
or  more,  and  thoroughly  explored  the  place. 
Upon  my  return  to  the  house  I  discovered 
that  I  had  lost  a  gold  cuff -stud  that  I  valued 
for  association's  sake.  I  merely  remem- 
bered that  I  wore  it  when  we  started  out, 
and  did  not  think  of  or  notice  it  again  until 
my  return,  when  it  was  missing.  As  it 
was  quite  dark,  it  seemed  useless  to  search 
for  it,  especially  as  it  was  the  season  of 
autumn  and  the  ground  was  covered  with 
dead  leaves. 

"That  night  I  dreamed  that  I  saw  a  with- 
ered grape-vine  clinging  to  a  wall,  and  with 
a  pile  of  dead  leaves  at  its  base.  Under- 
neath the  leaves,  in  my  dream,  I  distinctly 
saw  my  stud  gleaming. 

"The  following  morning  I  asked  the 
friends  with  whom  I  had  been  walking  the 
previous  afternoon  if  they  remembered  see- 
ing any  such  wall  and  vine,  as  I  did  not. 

81 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

They  replied  that  they  could  not  recall  any- 
thing answering  the  description.  I  did  not 
tell  them  why  I  asked,  as  I  felt  somewhat 
ashamed  of  the  dream,  but  during  the  morn- 
ing I  made  some  excuse  to  go  out  in  the 
grounds  alone.  I  walked  hither  and 
thither,  and  after  a  long  time  I  suddenly 
came  upon  the  wall  and  vine  exactly  as 
they  looked  in  my  dream.  I  had  not  the 
slightest  recollection  of  seeing  them  or  pass- 
ing by  them  on  the  previous  day.  The 
dead  leaves  at  the  base  were  lying  heaped 
up,  as  in  my  dream.  I  approached  cau- 
tiously, feeling  rather  uncomfortable  and 
decidedly  silly,  and  pushed  them  aside.  I 
had  scattered  a  large  number  of  leaves  when 
a  gleam  of  gold  struck  my  eye,  and  there  lay 
the  stud  exactly  as  in  my  dream." 

Professor  Royce's  informant  adds  that 
this  experience  will  always  be  remembered 
by  her  as  something  "uncanny."  Similarly, 
the  young  lady  who  found  her  check  in 
the  book  in  the  college  library  informs  me 

82 


DREAMS  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

that  the  dream  which  enabled  her  to  find 
it  has  troubled  her  greatly,  and  it  is  evident 
that  she  is  inclined  to  regard  it  as  a  super- 
natural manifestation.  It  would  not  be 
difficult  to  imagine  her  state  of  mind  had 
the  dream  taken  some  such  form  as  that 
reported  by  Professor  Hilprecht;  or  if,  as 
has  been  known  to  happen,  the  desired  in- 
formation had  been  given  by  a  vision  of 
the  "ghost"  of  some  deceased  relative. 
There  is,  for  instance,  the  strange  dream 
of  Miss  Elizabeth  Conley,  occurring  im- 
mediately after  the  death  of  her  father, 
an  Iowa  farmer,  who  had  gone  from  his 
home,  near  Ionia,  to  Dubuque  on  business, 
had  been  found  dead  in  a  hotel  shed,  and 
had  been  taken  to  the  morgue,  where, 
after  the  inquest,  his  body  was  made  ready 
for  shipment  home. 

The  clothes  he  had  been  wearing  were  so 
old,  torn,  and  soiled  that  they  were  dis- 
carded, made  into  a  bundle,  and  left  in  the 
morgue  yard  to  be  disposed  of  later.  But 

83 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

the  next  day,  when  Mr.  Conley's  son 
reached  Ionia  with  the  body,  he  was  asked 
by  his  sister  Elizabeth  what  had  been  done 
with  their  father's  clothes. 

"Father  came  to  me  in  a  dream,"  she 
declared,  "and  told  me  that  after  leaving 
home  he  had  sewed  a  roll  of  bills  inside  his 
shirt,  in  a  pocket  made  with  a  piece  of  my 
red  dress." 

The  brother,  not  unnaturally,  doubted 
the  value  of  a  statement  coming  from  such 
a  source,  but  his  sister  was  so  wrought  up 
that  the  family  physician  advised  him  to 
return  to  Dubuque  and  make  inquiry,  if 
only  to  set  her  mind  at  rest.  There 
followed  the  discovery  that  a  pocket  had, 
in  fact,  been  sewed  inside  the  shirt  with 
a  piece  of  red  cloth,  awkwardly  stitched 
as  by  a  man's  hand,  and  that  it  contained 
thirty  dollars  in  bills. 

From  a  dream  like  this  it  is  but  a  slight 
transition  to  the  last  of  our  four  classes  of 
exceptional  dreams  —  to  dreams,  that  is  to 

84 


DREAMS  AND   THE   SUPERNATURAL 

say,  in  which  information  would  seem  to  be 
supernaturally  given  of  events  occurring  at 
a  distance  from  the  dreamer,  and  of  events 
of  future  occurrence.  In  the  main  such 
dreams  are  concerned  with  coincidental  or 
impending  misfortune,  and  there  is  fre- 
quently a  vivid  presentation  of  the  person 
chiefly  concerned,  with  sometimes  a  more 
or  less  detailed  view  of  the  attendant  cir- 
cumstances. Thus  Canon  Warburton,  re- 
porting an  experience  of  his  youth,  relates 
that  he  once  dreamed  of  seeing  his  brother 
coming  out  of  a  ball-room  in  a  distant  part 
of  London  and  falling  down  the  stairs. 
Half  an  hour  later  he  was  joined  by  the 
brother,  who  told  him  of  a  narrow'  escape 
he  had  had  from  serious  injury  by  a  fall  in 
the  manner  seen  in  the  dream. 

Or,  if  it  is  a  case  of  death  coincidence, 
the  "ghost"  of  the  dead  person  may  appear 
to  the  dreamer,  and  may  even  be  heard  to 
speak,  as  in  a  weird  experience  narrated  by 
a  reputable  London  business  man  to  Mrs. 

85 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

Eleanor  Sidgwick,  widow  of  the  distin- 
guished scholar  Henry  Sidgwick.  This 
business  man  had  formerly  made  his  home 
in  Glasgow,  where  he  had  a  large  manu- 
facturing plant,  still  operated  by  him  at 
the  time  of  the  dream.  Among  his  em- 
ployees was  a  Robert  Mackenzie,  who  had 
been  in  his  service  for  many  years,  and  in 
whose  welfare  he  was  much  interested.  On 
the  Saturday  before  the  dream  the  em- 
ployees of  the  factory  had  their  annual 
ball.  The  following  Tuesday,  the  manu- 
facturer affirms : 

"I  dreamed,  but  with  no  vagueness,  as 
in  common  dreams,  no  blurring  of  outline 
or  rapid  passages  from  one  thing  discon- 
nectedly to  another,  that  I  was  seated  at 
a  desk,  engaged  in  a  business  conversation 
with  an  unknown  gentleman,  who  stood  on 
my  right  hand.  Towards  me,  in  front, 
advanced  Robert  Mackenzie,  and,  feeling 
annoyed,  I  addressed  him  with  some  asper- 
ity, asking  him  if  he  did  not  see  that  I  was 

86 


DREAMS  AND   THE   SUPERNATURAL 

engaged.  He  retired  to  a  short  distance 
with  exceeding  reluctance,  and  turned  again 
to  approach  me,  as  if  most  desirous  of  an 
immediate  colloquy,  when  I  spoke  to  him 
still  more  sharply  as  to  his  want  of  manners. 
On  this,  the  person  with  whom  I  was  con- 
versing took  his  leave,  and  Mackenzie  once 
more  came  forward. 

"'What  is  all  this,  Robert?'  I  asked, 
somewhat  angrily.  'Did  you  not  see  that 
I  was  engaged?' 

'Yes,    sir,'    he   replied;     'but   I   must 
speak  with  you  at  once.' 

'"What  about?'  I  said.  'What  is  it 
that  can  be  so  important?' 

"I  wish  to  tell  you,  sir,'  he  answered, 
'that  I  am  accused  of  doing  a  thing  I  did 
not  do,  and  that  I  want  you  to  know  it, 
and  I  tell  you  so,  and  that  you  are  to  for- 
give me  for  what  I  am  blamed  for,  because 
I  was  innocent.' 

"  Then,  '  I  did  not  do  the  thing  they  say 
I  did.' 

87 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

"I  said,  'What?'  getting  the  same  an- 
swer. I  then  naturally  asked : 

"But  how  can  I  forgive  you  if  you  do 
not  tell  me  what  you  are  accused  of?' 

"I  can  never  forget  the  emphatic  manner 
of  his  answer,  in  the  Scottish  dialect : 

"'Ye'llsuneken.' 

:'This  question  and  the  answer  were 
repeated  at  least  twice  —  I  am  certain  the 
answer  was  repeated  thrice,  in  the  most  fer- 
vent tone.  On  that  I  awoke,  and  was  in 
that  state  of  surprise  and  bewilderment 
which  such  a  remarkable  dream  might  in- 
duce, and  was  wondering  what  it  all  meant, 
when  my  wife  burst  into  my  bedroom,  much 
excited,  and,  holding  an  open  letter  in  her 
hand,  exclaimed : 

"  'Oh,  James !  here's  a  terrible  end  to  the 
workman's  ball :  Robert  Mackenzie  has 
committed  suicide ! ' 

"With  a  full  conviction  of  the  meaning 
of  the  vision,  I  at  once  quietly  and  firmly 
said: 

88  *     ' 


DREAMS  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

"No,  he  has  not  committed  suicide.' 
"How  can  you  possibly  know  that?' 
"'Because  he  has  just  been  here  to  tell 


me.' 


Later  word  was  received  from  the  mana- 
ger of  the  Glasgow  establishment  stating 
that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Mackenzie  had 
not  committed  suicide,  the  evidence  at  the 
inquest  showing  that  he  had  taken  a  drink 
by  mistake  from  a  bottle  of  poison,  think- 
ing it  was  whisky.1 

Again,  the  message  of  death  or  disaster 
may  be  apprehended  in  dream  symboli- 
cally, without  the  presence  of  the  principal 
actor  in  the  distant  tragedy.  I  once  re- 
ceived a  letter  from  a  lady  living  in  Brook- 
lyn, describing  an  experience  that  strikingly 
illustrates  this  point.  Her  dream,  however, 
was  of  such  an  intimate  character  that  the 
names  of  the  persons  and  places  must  be 
suppressed.  Three  years  ago,  this  lady 

1  Proceedings  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research,  vol.  Ill,  pp. 
95-98. 

89 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

writes,  her  daughter  became  interested  in 
a  young  man,  Mr.  V.,  whose  suit,  however, 
the  mother  discouraged.  Afterwards  her 
daughter  met,  fell  in  love  writh,  and  was 
happily  married  to  a  physician  in  the  Gov- 
ernment service.  She  soon  went  abroad 
with  her  husband,  to  a  remote  and  isolated 
post.  My  informant  continues  : 

"We  could  not  hear  from  them  all  winter 
because  they  were  ice-bound,  but  my 
thoughts  of  them  were  always  most  de- 
lightful, for  their  last  letters  were  bubbling 
over  with  happiness,  and  I  was  lovingly 
busy  getting  things  ready  for  them. 

"Mr.  V.  had  almost  passed  from  my 
mind,  when  one  morning,  in  the  middle  of 
June,  I  arose,  took  a  bath,  and,  having  a 
half-hour  to  spare,  went  back  to  bed  again, 
falling  into  a  deep  sleep. 

"Suddenly  Mr.  V.  appeared  to  me  in 
one  of  my  lower  rooms.  It  seemed  to  be 
breakfast  time,  and  I  invited  him  to  have 
some.  He  accepted,  and  we  sat  together 

90 


DREAMS  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

for  some  time,  but  I  do  not  remember  any 
of  our  conversation.  Suddenly  he  arose, 
faced  me,  and,  looking  straight  into  my 
eyes,  said  emphatically : 

" '  Now  she  is  mine !  Nothing  you  can 
do  will  ever  separate  us  again !  This  time 
she  will  belong  to  me ! ' 

"I  awoke  with  a  start,  much  frightened. 
Then,  realizing  the  situation,  I  thanked 
Heaven  she  was  safely  married,  and 
promptly  put  the  dream  from  me.  This  was 
about  eight  o'clock.  At  ten  a  despatch 
reached  me  saying  that  my  daughter's  hus- 
band had  died,  from  the  result  of  a  boating 
accident,  two  weeks  before." 

Of  dreams  revealing  events  not  of  past  or 
present  but  of  future  occurrence  an  aston- 
ishingly large  number  with  excellent  creden- 
tials have  been  recorded.  Usually  the  pre- 
monitory dream  is  one  of  death  or  illness, 
and  generally  concerns  either  the  dreamer 
himself  or  one  of  his  intimate  friends. 
Sometimes  it  indicates  a  course  of  action 

91 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

which,  if  followed,  will  avert  its  fulfillment. 
Typical  in  this  respect  is  the  dream  of  a 
lady  whom  I  will  call  Mrs.  Z. 

She  dreamed  that,  driving  in  her 
brougham  along  a  London  street  north  of 
Piccadilly,  the  family  coachman  fell  from 
the  box  and  struck  heavily  on  his  head. 
Shortly  before  going  to  bed  she  had  decided 
to  drive  next  day  to  Woolwich,  but  the 
dream  so  disturbed  her  that  she  almost 
changed  her  mind.  However,  not  wishing 
to  seem  superstitious,  she  went  as  planned. 

Nothing  happened  until  Piccadilly  was 
reached  on  the  return  journey.  Then  Mrs. 
Z.  noticed  that  other  coachmen  were  staring 
at  her  carnage ;  and,  looking  through  the 
glass  front  of  the  brougham,  she  saw  that 
her  driver  was  leaning  back  in  his  seat,  as 
though  to  restrain  the  horse.  As  the  car- 
riage turned  out  of  Piccadilly  the  memory 
of  her  dream  flashed  into  her  mind.  She 
ordered  the  brougham  stopped,  jumped  out, 
and  called  to  a  near-by  policeman  to  catch 
02 


DREAMS  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

the  coachman,  which  he  did  just  as  the 
latter  swayed  and  fell  from  the  box.  It 
developed  that  he  had  been  ill  since  the 
previous  day,  and  had  gradually  fainted 
from  exhaustion  during  the  drive  home. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  may  be  nothing 
in  the  least  portentous  in  a  premonitory 
dream ;  it  may  be  concerned  only  with 
some  trivial  or  bizarre  happening.  This 
is  too  often  overlooked  by  those  who  insist 
on  seeing  a  supernatural  agency  at  work  in 
all  exceptional  dreams.  There  is  one  odd 
case,  amply  corroborated,  in  which  a  lady 
dreamed  that  on  entering  her  drawing- 
room  after  church,  she  saw  five  dark  little 
spots  on  the  new  carpet,  and  that  these 
turned  out  to  be  holes  burned  into  the 
carpet.  The  next  day  was  Sunday,  and 
she  went  to  church  as  usual.  On  her 
return  she  visited  the  drawing-room,  where 
she  found  that  a  careless  housemaid  had 
dropped  some  hot  coals  on  the  carpet, 
causing  five  little  burned  patches.  Akin 

93 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

to  this  is  Mr.  Frederick  Greenwood's  dream 
of  the  dead  hand. 

"One  night,"  says  Mr.  Greenwood,  "I 
dreamed  that,  making  a  call  on  some  matter 
of  business,  I  was  shown  into  a  fine  great 
drawing-room  and  asked  to  wait.  Accord- 
ingly I  went  over  to  the  fireplace,  in  the 
usual  English  way,  preparing  to  wait  there. 
And  there,  after  the  same  fashion,  I  lounged 
with  my  arm  upon  the  mantelpiece;  but 
only  for  a  few  moments.  For,  feeling  that 
my  fingers  had  rested  on  something 
strangely  cold,  I  looked,  and  saw  that  they 
lay  on  a  dead  hand :  a  woman's  hand 
newly  cut  from  the  wrist. 

"Though  I  woke  in  horror  on  the  instant, 
this  dream  was  quite  forgotten  —  at  any 
rate,  for  the  time  —  when  I  did  next  day 
make  a  call  on  some  unimportant  matter 
of  business,  was  shown  into  a  pretty  little 
room  adorned  with  various  knickknacks, 
and  then  was  asked  to  wait.  Glancing  by 
chance  toward  the  mantelpiece  (the  dream 
94 


DREAMS  AND  THE   SUPERNATURAL 

of  the  previous  night  still  forgotten),  what 
should  I  see  but  the  hand  of  a  mummy, 
broken  from  the  wrist.  It  was  a  very  little 
hand,  and  on  it  was  a  ring  that  would  have 
been  a  'gem  ring'  if  the  dull  red  stone  in  it 
had  been  genuinely  precious.  Wherefore 
I  concluded  that  it  was  a  woman's  hand."1 
Neither  this  dream  nor  that  of  the  burned 
holes  in  the  carpet  served  any  useful  pur- 
pose, or  any  purpose  whatever.  Yet  they 
pointed  as  directly  and  vividly  to  future 
events  as  did  Mrs.  Z.'s  dream,  or  as  do  the 
numerous  dreams  on  record  predicting  the 
illness  or  death  of  the  dreamer  or  of  one  of 
the  dreamer's  friends.  There  is  reason, 
then,  for  inferring  that  the  mechanism  in  all 
such  cases  is  much  the  same.  Either  they 
are  all  "supernatural  dreams"  or  there  is 
nothing  "supernatural"  in  any  of  them. 
On  the  other  hand,  they  cannot  be  dismissed 
by  raising  the  cry  of  "chance  coincidence" 
or  by  insinuating  that  possibly  the  tellers 

1  "Imagination  in  Dreams,"  p.  197. 
95 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

of  the  dreams  did  not  adhere  strictly  to 
the  truth. 

This  is  the  so-called  explanation  advanced 
by  many  persons  with  respect  to  all  four 
classes  of  the  exceptional  dreams  described 
and  illustrated  above.  They  forget  that 
people  do  not  tell  untruths  that  are  likely 
to  expose  them  to  ridicule.  There  may  be 
some  few  who,  from  a  morbid  desire  for 
notoriety,  do  exaggerate  and  distort,  or 
even  concoct  positive  falsehoods  in  repre- 
senting themselves  as  the  heroes  or  heroines 
of  experiences  which  they  did  not  really 
have.  But  the  prevailing  tendency  is  to 
conceal,  not  to  make  public,  dreams  of  the 
type  in  question. 

Nothing,  indeed,  is  more  difficult  than  to 
induce  people  to  go  on  record  concerning 
such  dreams.  I  am  frequently  in  receipt 
of  letters  reporting  them  as  personal  ex- 
periences, and  almost  always  the  writers 
be!  ray  a  profound  dread  of  publicity. 
"Please  consider  this  confidential,"  "I 
96 


DREAMS  AND   THE   SUPERNATURAL 

have  not  dared  to  tell  this  to  any  one  be- 
fore," "If  you  make  any  use  of  this  I  beg 
you  not  to  mention  my  name,"  "I  would 
not  for  worlds  have  my  friends  know  of 
this,  for  they  would  think  I  was  crazy"  — 
phrases  like  these  recur  with  monotonous 
regularity.  To  psychical  researchers  it  is 
a  familiar  story.  There  are  undoubtedly 
creative,  revelatory,  monitory,  and  pre- 
monitory dreams,  but  people  who  have 
them,  since  they  can  account  for  them  only 
on  the  theory  that  "ghosts  did  it,"  do  not 
care  to  make  the  facts  public  lest  they  be 
deemed  superstitious  or  insane. 

Yet,  if  they  only  knew  it,  modern  science 
can  give  a  satisfactory  explanation  for  all 
exceptional  dreams  on  other  than  "ghostly" 
grounds.  Only  a  short  time  ago,  it  must 
be  acknowledged,  this  could  not  have  been 
said,  but  within  recent  years  the  develop- 
ment of  new  methods  of  experiment  and 
observation,  and  the  systematic  probing 
into  the  nature  and  possibilities  of  the 
97 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

human  mind  carried  on  alike  by  psycholo- 
gists and  psychical  researchers  have  opened 
up  vistas  of  knowledge  far  transcending 
those  possessed  by  previous  generations. 

Assuming,  then,  that  a  given  exceptional 
dream  is  vitiated  neither  by  errors  of 
memory  nor  by  deliberate  falsification, 
how  would  science  explain  it?  What  are 
the  facts  which  science  has  to  offer,  enabling 
us  to  understand,  without  resort  to  the 
supernatural,  how  we  can  have  dreams  in 
which  we  arrive  at  great  creative  concep- 
tions, solve  difficult  problems,  trace  lost 
articles,  obtain  information  of  events  occur- 
ring at  a  distance,  and  even  gain  glimpses 
into  futurity? 

There  is,  first,  the  fact  that  the  processes 
of  the  mind  in  sleep  closely  parallel  those  of 
the  waking  consciousness.  As  was  shown 
in  the  preceding  chapter,  we  think,  we 
reason,  we  exercise  our  imagination,  in 
sleep  in  very  much  the  same  way  as  when 
awake.  And,  whether  awake  or  asleep, 
98 


DREAMS  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

much  of  our  mental  activity  is  "subcon- 
scious" —  in  sleep,  indeed,  it  is  wholly  so. 
We  have  the  faculty,  without  conscious, 
voluntary  effort,  of  drawing  on  the  store- 
house of  our  memory,  recalling  percepts  — 
sights,  sounds,  etc.  —  of  our  waking  life, 
and  utilizing  them  as  the  material  for  a 
train  of  thought  which,  through  a  dream, 
provided  that  we  remember  it,  may  be 
consciously  apprehended  by  us. 

There  is  the  further  important  considera- 
tion that,  when  awake,  not  only  do  we  do 
much  of  our  thinking  subconsciously,  but 
we  also  do  much  of  our  perceiving  in  the 
same  way.  Every  sight  and  sound  of  the 
waking  life,  whether  noticed  or  unnoticed, 
makes  an  impression  on  our  mind,  and  may 
be  afterwards  recalled  in  memory.  This, 
beyond  any  question,  is  one  of  the  most 
significant  of  the  discoveries  of  latter-day 
psychology,  and  its  actuality  has  been 
proved  time  and  again  by  scientific  experi- 
ment. 

99 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

It  has  been  found,  for  example,  that  when 
persons  are  hypnotized,  they  can  recall  in 
minute  detail  incidents  of  which  they  never 
had  conscious  knowledge,  but  which  demon- 
strably  formed  part  of  their  past  experi- 
ences. The  same  principle  has  been  other- 
wise established  through  experiments  with 
that  peculiar  method  of  inducing  visual 
hallucinations  known  as  crystal-gazing. 
There  is  in  England  a  lady,  Miss  Goodrich- 
Freer,  a  well-known  member  of  the  Society 
for  Psychical  Research,  who  has  for  years 
been  experimenting  in  crystal  vision,  with 
the  result  of  adding  appreciably  to  scien- 
tific knowledge  of  the  workings  of  the  mind. 
It  would  be  tedious  to  quote  at  any  length 
from  the  records  of  her  experiments,1  but 
some  quotation  may  profitably  be  made,  in 
order  to  give  a  clear  idea  of  the  marvelous 
possibilities  of  subconscious  perception. 
On  one  occasion  she  reports : 

1  These  will  be  found  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Society  for 
Piychical  Research,  vol.  V,  pp.  488-521 ;  vol.  VIII,  pp.  484-495. 

100 


DREAMS  AND  THE   SUPERNATURAL 

"  I  saw  in  the  crystal  a  pool  of  blood  (as  it 
seemed  to  me)  lying  on  the  pavement  at 
the  corner  of  a  terrace  close  to  my  door. 
This  suggested  nothing  to  me.  Then  I  re- 
membered that  I  had  passed  over  that  spot 
in  the  course  of  a  walk  of  a  few  hundred 
yards  home  from  the  circulating  library ; 
and  that,  the  street  being  empty,  I  had  been 
looking  into  the  books  as  I  walked.  After- 
wards I  found  that  my  boots  and  the  bottom 
of  my  dress  were  stained  with  red  paint, 
which  I  must  have  walked  through  un- 
observingly." 

And  again : 

"I  saw  in  the  crystal  a  young  girl,  an  inti- 
mate friend,  waving  to  me  from  her  carriage. 
I  observed  that  her  hair,  which  had  hung 
down  her  back  when  I  last  saw  her,  was 
now  put  up  in  young-lady  fashion.  Most 
certainly  I  had  not  consciously  seen  even 
the  carriage,  the  look  of  which  I  knew  very 
well.  But  next  day  I  called  on  my  friend ; 
was  reproached  by  her  for  not  having  ob- 
101 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

served  her  as  she  passed ;  and  perceived 
that  she  had  altered  her  hair  in  the  way 
which  the  crystal  had  shown." 

Once  somebody  suggested  to  Miss  Good- 
rich-Freer  that  she  look  in  the  crystal  with 
the  intention  of  seeing,  not  pictures,  but 
words.  She  was  immediately  rewarded  by 
the  sight  of  what  was  obviously  a  news- 
paper announcement. 

"It  reported,"  she  states,  "the  death  of  a 
lady  at  one  time  a  most  frequent  visitor  in 
my  circle,  and  very  intimate  with  some  of 
my  nearest  friends ;  an  announcement, 
therefore,  which,  had  I  consciously  seen  it, 
would  have  interested  me  considerably.  I 
related  my  vision  at  breakfast,  quoting 
name,  date,  place,  and  an  allusion  to  'a 
long  period  of  suffering'  borne  by  the  de- 
ceased lady,  and  added  that  I  was  sure  that 
I  had  not  heard  any  report  of  her  illness, 
or  even,  for  some  months,  any  mention  of 
her  likely  to  suggest  such  a  hallucination. 
I  was,  however,  aware  that  I  had  the  day 
102 


DREAMS  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

before  taken  up  the  first  sheet  of  the  Times, 
but  was  interrupted  before  I  had  consciously 
read  any  announcement  of  death.  Mrs. 
Henry  Sidgwick,  with  whom  I  was  staying, 
immediately  sought  for  the  paper,  where 
we  discovered  the  paragraph  almost  exactly 
as  I  had  seen  it." 

Suppose  that,  instead  of  getting  the  infor- 
mation of  her  friend's  death  by  means  of  a 
little  picture  in  a  crystal,  Miss  Goodrich- 
Freer  had  had  a  dream  in  which  the  dead 
friend  appeared  to  her  and  solemnly  said : 
"I  have  had  a  long  period  of  suffering,  but 
it  is  over  now."  And  suppose  that  the 
next  day  word  had  been  received  of  the 
friend's  death,  Miss  Goodrich-Freer  mean- 
while having  completely  forgotten  that  she 
had  glanced  at  the  Times.  Would  this 
not  have  been  on  a  par  with  many  of  the 
dreams  that  bring  amazement  and  con- 
sternation to  their  dreamers? 

In  truth,  these  two  facts,  of  subconscious 
mentation  and  subconscious  perception, 
103 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

are  of  themselves  sufficient  to  account  for 
by  far  the  greater  number  of  dreams  that 
smack  of  the  supernatural.  Always,  it  is  to 
be  noted,  the  dreams  of  the  first  of  our  four 
classes,  the  creative  dreams,  are  of  a  kind 
appropriate  to  the  waking  thoughts  and 
activities  of  the  dreamer.  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson,  a  writer  of  stories,  gets  the  plots 
of  stories  in  dream.  He  does  not,  like 
Tartini,  get  a  "Devil's  Sonata,"  nor  yet 
the  conception  for  a  valuable  innovation  in 
commercial  architecture,  such  as  was 
dreamed  by  the  Pacific  Coast  architect. 
The  subconscious,  after  all,  is  closely  linked 
to  the  conscious.  Whatever  chiefly  con- 
cerns a  man's  conscious  thoughts  will  be 
the  chief  concern  of  his  subconscious  think- 
ing, awake  or  asleep. 

The  artist  will  subconsciously  think  of 
subjects,  colors,  combinations ;  the  musi- 
cian, of  themes  and  harmonies ;  the  mathe- 
matician, of  mathematical  theories  and 
applications.  Hence,  too,  when  one's 
104 


DREAMS  AND  THE   SUPERNATURAL 

thoughts  in  sleep  turn  to  the  solution 
of  problems  rather  than  the  exercise  of 
creative  imagination,  the  problems  dealt 
with  will  invariably  be  those  that  are  of 
greatest  interest  to  the  sleeper  when 
awake. 

Undoubtedly,  though,  subconscious  per- 
ception has  a  very  special  influence  in  many 
dreams  that  give  the  solution  of  problems. 
Professor  Hilprecht,  to  return  to  one  of  our 
illustrative  cases,  had  for  weeks  been  striv- 
ing to  solve  the  riddle  of  the  agate  frag- 
ments. Consciously  he  had  formulated 
and  rejected  many  tentative  interpreta- 
tions. All  the  while,  his  tireless  poring 
over  the  problem  was  adding  to  the  store 
of  his  subconscious  as  well  as  conscious 
percepts  relating  to  it.  Subconsciously  he 
would  be  ever  approaching  closer  to  the 
solution  which,  in  his  case,  was  finally 
attained  while  he  slept,  being  presented  to 
him,  in  accordance  with  the  recognized 
tendency  of  the  sleeping  consciousness  to 
105 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

dramatize  its  material,  in  the  form  of  a 
weird  dream-story. 

Precisely  the  same  explanation  would 
apply  in  the  case  of  the  business  man  to 
whom  was  revealed  in  dream  the  source  of 
the  baffling  error  in  his  cash  account.  So, 
likewise,  in  subconscious  perception  we 
have  an  adequate  explanation  for  all  dreams 
in  which  the  hiding-place  of  some  lost 
article  is  made  known.  The  young  lady 
in  Greeley,  so  worried  by  the  dream  that 
aided  her  in  recovering  her  lost  check,  tells 
me  that  after  the  recovery  of  the  check  she 
remembered  that  the  book  in  which  it  was 
found  had  been  in  her  room  for  some  hours 
the  day  she  received  her  father's  letter. 
What  happened,  I  have  no  doubt,  was  that 
she  absent-mindedly  slipped  the  check  into 
the  book,  and  then,  so  far  as  her  upper 
consciousness  was  concerned,  forgot  all 
about  it.  But  subconsciously  she  would 
remember  —  as  we  know  from  experiments 
such  as  those  carried  on  by  Miss  Goodrich- 
106 


DREAMS  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

Freer  —  and  subconsciously  would  be  re- 
minded of  it  the  day  before  the  dream 
when,  in  the  college  library,  she  happened 
to  see  the  same  book  again,  without,  per- 
chance, any  conscious  knowledge  of  seeing 
it.  That  night,  in  sleep,  her  mind  busied 
itself  once  more  with  the  problem  of  the 
missing  check,  this  time  to  good  purpose. 

The  application  of  the  same  principle  to 
the  similar  cases  cited  by  me  need  not  long 
detain  us.  It  is  only  necessary  to  assume, 
in  the  first  case,  that  Mr.  Squires,  without 
being  aware  of  the  fact,  saw  the  lost  watch 
while  searching  for  it  in  the  hay-field ;  and, 
in  the  second  case,  that  Professor  Royce's 
informant  glimpsed  her  stud  as  it  fell  among 
the  leaves,  but  did  not  consciously  realize 
that  it  was  her  stud  that  had  fallen.  In 
both  cases  a  memory  of  the  incident  and 
its  setting  would  be  subconsciously  retained. 
In  the  case  of  Elizabeth  Conley's  dream, 
which  is  on  the  same  order,  it  is  altogether 
probable  that  Miss  Conley  had  once  known, 
107 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

but  had  forgotten,  her  father's  intention  to 
sew  a  pocket  into  his  shirt. 

Nor  need  we  go  beyond  subconscious 
perception  —  or,  at  most,  telepathy  be- 
tween living  minds  —  to  explain  premoni- 
tory dreams.1  When  it  is  a  dream  of  dis- 
ease or  death  impending  for  the  dreamer, 
there  is  always  the  possibility  that,  as  in 
my  cat-clawing  dream  cited  in  the  pre- 
ceding chapter,  disease  had  already  so  far 
progressed  as  to  cause  organic  changes 
occasioning  sensations  too  slight  to  be 
appreciated  by  the  waking  consciousness, 
but  sufficient  to  stimulate  the  sleeping  con- 
sciousness to  activity.  When  the  dream 

1  It  must  frankly  be  added  that  there  are  on  record  certain 
well-attested  dreams  of  a  "clairvoyant  "  character  —  relatingtvi|H'- 
cially  to  the  recovery  of  the  bodies  of  people  who  have  died  under 
circumstances  seemingly  unknown  to  any  living  person  —  which 
appear  to  defy  explanation  on  even  a  telepathic  basis.  But  this 
does  not  necessarily  mean  that  one  must  resort  to  a  "ghostly" 
hypothesis  to  explain  them.  It  may  be  that  such  dreams  are 
evidential  of  an  as  yet  unrecognized  natural  power  of  the  human 
mind.  This  view,  indeed,  is  vigorously  maintained  in  a  recent 
book,  "On  the  Cosmic  Relations,"  by  Mr.  Henry  Holt;  who,  for 
that  matter,  would  also  apply  his  hypothesis  of  a  "cosmic  sense" 
to  explain  all  dreams. 

108 


DREAMS  AND  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

relates  to  the  illness  of  some  one  other  than 
the  dreamer,  it  is  safe  to  assume  that,  con- 
sciously or  subconsciously,  an  inkling  of 
the  state  of  that  other  person's  health  had 
been  obtained  by  the  dreamer  before  the 
dream. 

Take  Mrs.  Z.'s  peculiar  dream  of  the  fall- 
ing coachman.  Her  own  statement  shows 
that  the  coachman  had  been  quite  ill  the 
day  before,  and  was  in  no  condition  to 
undertake  a  long  drive.  It  is  not  unreason- 
able to  assume  that  Mrs.  Z.  noticed  that 
he  was  not  looking  well,  and  subconsciously 
asked  herself  whether  he  would  be  fit  to 
take  her  driving  next  day,  a  question  which 
her  subconsciousness  answered  by  pre- 
figuring an  accident  likely  to  occur  under 
the  circumstances. 

The  element  of  the  marvelous  is  equally 
obliterated  from  such  dreams  as  those  of 
the  dead  hand  and  the  holes  burned  in  the 
carpet,  when  we  take  into  consideration,  as 
we  are  bound  to  do,  the  possibilities  of 
109 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

subconscious  mental  action.  Mr.  Frederick 
Greenwood,  thinking  of  the  business  call 
he  had  to  make  next  day,  would  be  re- 
minded of  the  house  he  was  to  visit,  and 
this  would  readily  serve  to  evoke  in  his 
sleeping  consciousness  a  memory  of  the 
mummy's  hand  on  the  mantelpiece.  As 
to  the  dream  of  the  holes  in  the  carpet,  the 
probability  is  that  they  were  burned  into 
the  carpet  the  night  before  the  dream,  not 
the  day  after  it,  and  that  the  dreamer  saw 
them  "out  of  the  corner  of  her  eye,"  as 
she  passed  the  drawing-room  on  her  way 
to  bed.  Otherwise  her  dream  is  inexplicable 
on  any  hypothesis,  even  that  of  "spirit 
agency."  It  is  preposterous  to  imagine 
that  "spirits"  would  trouble  themselves 
with  notifying  anxious  housewives  of  the 
imminence  of  trifling  domestic  mishaps. 
Another  and  more  difficult  problem  is 
presented  by  well-authenticated  dreams 
that  involve  coincidental  action  at  a  dis- 
tance, although  there  is  reason  for  believing 
110 


DREAMS  AND  THE   SUPERNATURAL 

that  many  even  of  these  have  a  very  simple 
explanation.  To  give  a  specific  instance, 
the  dream  of  the  London  business  man 
relating  to  the  alleged  suicide  of  his  em- 
ployee, Mackenzie,  was  in  all  likelihood 
nothing  more  than  the  reaction  of  his 
sleeping  consciousness  to  the  news  brought 
him  by  his  wife  when  she  rushed  into  the 
room.  He  was,  as  his  account  indicates, 
not  more  than  half  awake  when  he  heard 
his  wife's  statement.  Dreams,  as  we  know, 
come  quickly,  and  in  a  few  seconds  a  com- 
plicated dream-story  can  present  itself  to 
the  mind.  The  business  man,  in  a  semi- 
waking,  semi-sleeping  state,  would  subcon- 
sciously protest  against  the  accusation  that 
an  old  and  trusted  employee,  with  whose 
character  he  was  fully  acquainted,  had 
taken  his  own  life ;  and  the  subconscious 
protest  would  instantly  frame  itself  as  a 
dramatic  dream. 

This  might  also  be  said  of  the  Brooklyn 
lady's  dream  symbolizing  the  death  of  her 
111 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

son-in-law,  if  only  we  could  be  sure  that 
the  news  of  the  death  was  already  known 
to  other  members  of  her  household,  so 
that  she  might  have  overheard  them  talking 
about  it  while  taking  her  bath.  Against 
such  a  possibility,  however,  has  to  be  set 
her  positive  declaration  that  the  despatch 
announcing  the  death  was  not  received 
until  two  hours  after  the  dream.  Even 
so,  it  would  not  be  necessary  to  introduce 
a  ghostly  agency  as  an  explanatory  factor. 
For  there  is  the  possibility  that  the  news 
was  conveyed  to  her  mind  from  the  mind 
of  her  sorrowing  daughter  by  telepathy,  or 
thought  transference.  The  same  process 
would  explain  Canon  Warburton's  dream 
of  the  accident  to  his  brother. 

But,  it  may  be  objected,  if  subconscious 
mental  action  is  thus  responsible  for  excep- 
tional dreams,  why  do  we  not  have  them 
oftener?  For  just  this  reason,  that,  at 
bottom,  they  are  exceptional  with  regard 
to  their  contents  rather  than  their  mechan- 
112 


DREAMS  AND  THE   SUPERNATURAL 

ism.  Being  dreams,  they  are  subject  to 
the  laws  of  dreaming.  Like  any  ordinary 
dream,  they  require  an  initial  physical 
stimulus,  whether  internal  or  external. 
And  when  the  stimulus  is  received,  and  the 
sleeping  consciousness  sets  to  work  to  in- 
terpret it,  it  may  very  well  happen  that 
some  emotional  complex  is  so  dominant  in 
the  sleeper's  mind  that  the  resultant  inter- 
pretation is  of  the  ordinary,  not  the  excep- 
tional, type.  Besides  which,  dreams  are 
easily  forgotten,  and  there  is  proof  that 
exceptional  dreams  are  no  more  likely  to 
be  remembered  than  any  others.  Even  in 
the  cases  given  in  this  chapter  a  large  pro- 
portion of  the  dreamers  entirely  forgot 
their  dreams  until  some  chance  occurrence 
recalled  them  to  mind.  My  own  belief 
is  that  every  one  of  us  has,  from  time  to 
time,  exceptional  dreams  which  fail  to  find 
remembrance  in  the  waking  state. 


113 


CHAPTER   IV 
Disorders  of  Sleep 

SLEEP,  as  was  pointed  out  in  the 
opening  chapter,  is  not  an  abnor- 
mal condition ;  it  is  a  normal,  pro- 
tective function,  having  for  its  purpose  the 
prevention  of  excessive  fatigue.  But,  like 
every  other  function  of  the  human  organ- 
ism, it  does  not  always  work  smoothly. 
Many  people  find  it  difficult  to  obtain  a 
proper  amount  of  sleep ;  and  even  among 
those  to  whom  sleep  comes  readily,  its 
processes  often  are  strangely  disturbed. 
One  common  disorder  of  sleep  is  so  dis- 
agreeable that  its  victims  would  almost 
prefer  to  be  unable  to  sleep  at  all. 

This  is  the  nightmare,  the  well-named 
"incubus"  of  the  ancient  Romans.     From 
time  immemorial  it  has  been  one  of  the 
114 


DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

afflictions  of  humanity,  and  it  is  to-day  as 
much  in  evidence  as  ever  it  was.  Until 
quite  lately,  in  fact,  it  was  among  the 
wholly  unsolved  problems  of  medicine. 
This,  happily,  is  no  longer  the  case.  Re- 
cent investigations  from  the  vantage-point 
of  the  new  science  of  medical  psychology 
have  thrown  some  sorely  needed  light  on 
this  scourge  of  the  sleeping  state,  with 
respect  both  to  its  causation  and  to  its 
proper  treatment. 

Essentially,  as  every  victim  is  painfully 
aware,  nightmare  is  a  morbid  condition  of 
dreaming,  characterized  by  certain  dis- 
tinctive phenomena.  Chief  among  these 
are  (1)  agonizing  dread  and  anxiety ;  (2)  a 
feeling  of  weight  at  the  chest,  interfering 
with  the  power  to  breathe;  (3)  temporary 
paralysis.  More  elaborately,  in  the  pic- 
turesque language  of  an  early  writer  on 
the  subject : 

;<The  modifications  which  nightmare  as- 
sumes are  infinite;  but  one  passion  is 
115 


SLEEP  AND   SLEEPLESSNESS 

almost  never  absent  —  that  of  utter  and 
incomprehensible  dread.  Sometimes  the 
sufferer  is  buried  beneath  overwhelming 
rocks,  which  crush  him  on  all  sides,  but 
still  leave  him  with  a  miserable  conscious- 
ness of  his  situation.  Sometimes  he  is 
involved  in  the  coils  of  a  horrid,  slimy 
monster,  whose  eyes  have  the  phosphor- 
escent glare  of  the  sepulchre,  and  whose 
breath  is  poisonous  as  the  marsh  of  Lerna. 
...  Or  he  may  have  the  idea  of  a  mon- 
strous hag  squatted  upon  his  breast  - 
mute,  motionless,  and  malignant ;  an  in- 
carnation of  the  Evil  Spirit  —  whose  in- 
tolerable weight  crushes  the  breath  out 
of  his  body,  and  whose  fixed,  deadly, 
incessant  stare  petrifies  him  with  horror 
and  makes  his  very  existence  unsufferable. 
"In  every  instance  there  is  a  sense  of 
oppression  and  helplessness;  and  the  ex- 
tent to  which  these  are  carried  varies  ac- 
cording to  the  violence  of  the  paroxysm. 
The  individual  never  feels  himself  a  free 
116 


DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

agent ;  on  the  contrary,  he  is  spell-bound 
by  some  enchantment,  and  remains  an 
unresisting  victim  for  malice  to  work  its 
will  upon.  He  can  neither  breathe,  nor 
walk,  nor  run,  with  his  wonted  facility. 
If  pursued  by  any  imminent  danger,  he 
can  hardly  drag  one  limb  after  another; 
if  engaged  in  combat,  his  blows  are  utterly 
ineffective ;  if  involved  in  the  fangs  of  any 
animal,  or  in  the  grasp  of  an  enemy,  ex- 
trication is  impossible.  He  struggles,  he 
pants,  he  toils,  but  it  is  all  in  vain ;  his 
muscles  are  rebels  to  the  will,  and  refuse 
to  obey  its  calls.  In  no  case  is  there  a 
sense  of  complete  freedom ;  the  benumbing 
stupor  never  departs  from  him ;  and  his 
whole  being  is  locked  up  in  one  mighty 
spasm. 

"Sometimes  he  is  forcing  himself  through 
an  aperture  too  small  for  the  reception  of 
his  body,  and  is  there  arrested  and  tortured 
by  the  pangs  of  suffocation  produced  by 
the  pressure  to  which  he  is  exposed ;  or 
117 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

he  loses  his  way  in  a  narrow  labyrinth, 
and  gets  involved  in  its  contracted  and 
inextricable  mazes ;  or  he  is  entombed 
alive  in  a  sepulchre,  beside  the  mouldering 
dead.  There  is,  in  most  cases,  an  intense 
reality  in  all  that  he  sees,  or  hears,  or  feels. 
The  aspects  of  the  hideous  phantoms  which 
harass  his  imagination  are  bold  and  defined ; 
the  sounds  which  greet  his  ear  appallingly 
distinct ;  and  when  any  dimness  or  con- 
fusion of  imagery  does  prevail,  it  is  of  the 
most  fearful  kind,  leaving  nothing  but  dreary 
and  miserable  impressions  behind  it."1 

The  inability  to  move  may  persist  after 
the  awakening,  and  we  then  have  what  may 
be  called  a  waking  nightmare.  There  may 
even  be  no  remembrance  of  the  morbid 
dream,  when  the  nightmare  will  naturally 
seem  to  the  sufferer  to  be  wholly  an  affair 
of  the  waking  consciousness.  This  is  the 
experience  of  a  friend  of  mine,  a  well-known 
American  poet  and  essayist.  He  even  in- 

1  Robert  Macnish's  "The  Philosophy  of  Sleep,"  pp.  123-145. 
118 


DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

sists  that  at  times  he  knows  he  has  not 
been  asleep.  More  commonly,  though  the 
precedent  dream  be  forgotten,  there  is 
awareness  of  the  fact  that  one  has  been 
sleeping,  and  the  waking  nightmare  takes 
the  course  described  in  Waller's  early 
"Treatise  on  the  Incubus": 

"The  uneasiness  of  the  patient  in  his 
dream  rapidly  increases,  till  it  ends  in  a 
kind  of  consciousness  that  he  is  in  bed  and 
asleep ;  but  he  feels  to  be  oppressed  with 
some  weight  which  confines  him  upon  his 
back,  and  prevents  his  breathing,  which 
is  now  become  extremely  laborious,  so  that 
the  lungs  cannot  be  fully  inflated  by  any 
effort  he  can  make.  The  sensation  is  now 
the  most  painful  that  can  be  conceived ; 
the  person  becomes  every  instant  more 
awake  and  conscious  of  his  situation ;  he 
makes  violent  efforts  to  move  his  limbs, 
especially  his  arms,  with  a  view  of  throwing 
off  the  incumbent  weight,  but  not  a  muscle 
will  obey  the  impulse  of  the  will;  he 
119 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

groans  aloud,  if  he  has  strength  to  do  it, 
while  every  effort  he  makes  seems  to  ex- 
haust the  little  remaining  vigor.  ...  If 
left  to  himself,  he  lies  in  this  state  generally 
about  a  minute  or  two,  when  he  recovers 
all  at  once  the  power  of  volition." 

It  is  not  surprising  that  in  pre-scientific 
days  the  nightmare  was  popularly  attrib- 
uted to  demons,  evil  spirits,  and  witches ; 
and  that  it  gave  rise  to  the  vampire  super- 
stition, which  lingers  to-day  in  some  parts 
of  the  world.  Its  first  medical  treatment 
was  by  shaving  the  head,  bleeding,  and  the 
administration  of  wild  carrot,  parsley,  and 
peony  seeds.  Later,  when  its  connection 
with  gastric  disturbances  was  clearly  rec- 
ognized, treatment  by  means  of  dieting 
came  into  vogue.  This  still  is  the  preva- 
lent method  of  treatment,  despite  the  im- 
portant circumstance  that  it  is  far  from 
insuring  the  desired  relief.  Moreover,  as 
was  pointed  out  a  few  years  ago  by  Doctor 
Ernest  Jones : 

ISO 


DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

"Any  skeptical  inquiry  immediately  re- 
veals two  facts.  First,  that  all  the  alleged 
causes  of  nightmare  often  occur,  both  alone 
and  in  combination,  in  persons  who  never 
show  any  symptoms  of  nightmare ;  a 
patient  whose  stomach  is  half  destroyed 
by  cancer  may  commit  all  sorts  of  dietary 
indiscretions,  including  even  indulgence  in 
cucumber  —  the  article  of  food  that  is  most 
looked  askance  at  in  relation  to  nightmare 
—  he  may  even  sleep  on  his  back,  and  still 
will  defy  medical  orthodoxy  in  not  suffering 
from  any  trace  of  nightmare.  Secondly, 
that  a  habitual  sufferer  from  nightmare 
may  be  scrupulously  rigorous  in  regard  to 
both  the  quality  and  quantity  of  all  that 
he  eats,  may  in  fact  develop  a  maladie  de 
scrupule  in  this  direction;  that  he  may 
martyr  himself  with  elaborate  precautions 
to  avoid  these  and  other  'causes'  of  the 
malady,  and  by  means  of  a  contrivance  of 
spikes  insure  against  ever  lying  —  let  alone 
sleeping  —  on  his  back,  but  despite  all 
121 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

his  endeavors  he  will  have  to  endure  as 
many  and  as  severe  attacks  as  before."1 

Quite  evidently,  one  need  not  fear  attacks 
of  nightmare  unless  one  has  a  special  pre- 
disposition to  it.  On  the  other  hand,  in 
order  fully  to  cure  nightmare,  the  nature 
of  this  predisposition  must  be  ascertained, 
and  appropriate  measures  taken  to  offset  it. 
Within  the  past  few  years,  or  since  psy- 
chology became  linked  with  medicine, 
marked  progress  in  this  direction  has  been 
made.  And  it  has  chiefly  been  made  by 
recognizing  that  since  nightmare  is  essen- 
tially a  form  of  dreaming,  it  must  be,  like 
all  dreams,  closely  linked  to,  and  deter- 
mined by,  subconscious  mental  states  of 
strong  emotional  coloring. 

In  that  event,  taking  into  account  the 
characteristic  symptoms  of  dread  and  help- 
lessness, it  would  seem  logically  to  follow 
that  nightmare  is  in  the  last  analysis  the 
product  of  some  subconscious  state  of  ex- 

1  American  Journal  of  Insanity,  vol.  LXVI,  p.  405. 
122 


DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

ceptional  intensity,  operating  on  an  organ- 
ism perhaps  unduly  impressionable  by  birth. 
Such,  indeed,  is  the  view  now  held  by  the 
medical  psychologists  who  have  studied 
the  nightmare  problem.  But  they  are  by 
no  means  in  agreement  as  to  the  exact 
nature  of  the  subconscious  state  involved. 
Some  —  the  Freudian  psychologists  - 
would  restrict  it  to  latent  thoughts  and 
wishes  connected  with  the  sexual  sphere. 
These,  they  say,  may  be  thoughts  and 
wishes  of  which  the  individual  has  never 
been  entirely  conscious;  but  their  pres- 
ence in  the  recesses  of  his  mind  can  be 
detected  by  careful  psychological  analysis, 
and  to  them  his  nightmare  is  wholly  due. 
"The  malady  known  as  nightmare,"  is 
the  way  Doctor  Ernest  Jones  puts  it,  "is 
always  an  expression  of  intense  mental 
conflict  centering  about  some  form  of  're- 
pressed' sexual  desire."  In  proof  whereof 
the  Freudians  cite  numerous  cases  of  night- 
mare in  which  the  detection  and  elimination 
123 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 


of  these  subconscious  sexual  ideas  have 
been  followed  by  lasting  cures. 

It  may,  however,  be  reasonably  ques- 
tioned whether  Freud  and  his  pupils  aro 
justified  in  thus  limiting  the  causation  of 
nightmare  to  a  single  species  of  subcon- 
scious ideas.  The  observations  of  other 
medical  psychologists  would  indicate  that 
it  may  take  its  rise  from  any  emotional 
state  of  a  profoundly  disquieting  character. 
Certainly  this  has  been  demonstrated  in 
the  case  of  one  special  variety  of  night- 
mare—  the  pavor  nocturnus,  or  "night 
terrors"  — so  common  in  early  childhood, 
and  so  succinctly  described  by  one  physi- 
cian in  these  words : 

"The  child  starts  up  out  of  an  apparently 
sound  sleep,  crying  with  seeming  alarm, 
calling  for  his  mother,  and  staring  wildly 
around,  with  every  possible  expression  of 
terror.  Sometimes  he  jumps  from  his 
couch,  and  runs  headlong  into  a  corner,  or 
seeks  concealment  under  the  bed,  as  if 
124 


DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

escaping  from  some  frightful  object.  The 
eyes  are  open,  tears  flow,  perspiration  covers 
the  skin,  there  is  the  greatest  excitement, 
and  the  little  one,  clinging  convulsively  to 
his  parent,  will  not  be  quieted.  Only  after 
a  number  of  minutes  does  the  child  seem 
to  recover  the  power  of  recognizing  his 
friends.  Presently,  however,  he  lies  down, 
and  falls  immediately  asleep,  waking  in 
the  morning  without  the  slightest  remem- 
brance of  the  unpleasant  event."  l 

Doctor  Lyman  adds  that  "night  terrors" 
generally  occur  only  to  "neurotic"  children. 
The  modern  medical  psychologist  would 
amend  this  statement  by  saying  that  they 
occur  only  to  ultra-impressionable  children 
who  have  been  subjected  to  experiences 
that  have  greatly  distressed  them.  These 
may  be  experiences  in  the  domain  of  sex ; 
but  they  far  more  frequently  relate  to  occur- 
rences of  a  non-sexual  character.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  anything  that  profoundly 

1  Henry  Lyman's  "Insomnia,"  p.  179. 
125 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

shocks  or  alarms  a  sensitive  child  may  prove 
provocative  of  "night  terrors";  or,  for 
that  matter,  of  far  more  serious  psycho- 
neurotic  symptoms. 

This  is  a  point  that  parents  should  keep 
well  in  remembrance.  As  things  now  stand, 
too  many  of  them  unwittingly  bring  up 
children  in  an  atmosphere  that  tends  to 
fill  their  minds  with  disquieting  images, 
which,  through  the  subtle  force  of  subcon- 
scious mental  action,  may  manifest  in 
"night  terrors."  The  mechanism  is  well 
described  by  the  Washington  medical  psy- 
chologist, Doctor  T.  A.  Williams : 

"If  I  say  to  a  small  boy  that  a  bear  will 
eat  him  up,  the  effect  upon  his  emotions 
entirely  differs  whether  I  make  the  remark 
with  portentous  gravity  and  horror,  or 
whether  I  say  it  with  bubbling  joviality, 
as  evidently  a  huge  joke.  In  the  first 
eventuality,  the  boy  will  rush  to  my  side 
in  terror,  and  try  to  be  saved  from  the  bear ; 
and  a  phobia  is  in  course  of  construction ; 
126 


DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

with  the  latter  procedure  the  boy  will 
laugh  consumedly,  and  it  would  not  take 
much  to  make  him  enter  the  cage  and 
strike  the  bear.  But  even  when  terrified, 
a  child  feels  a  refuge  in  the  protection  of 
his  elders  during  the  day,  when  they  are 
rarely  absent. 

"At  night,  however,  the  child  is  alone, 
and  his  little  consciousness  cannot  find  the 
easy  support  of  others.  Before  the  kalei- 
doscope of  his  dreams  pass  the  various 
images  and  accompanying  emotions  of  his 
waking  life,  so  that  if  any  of  these  images 
has  become  linked  with  fear,  it  is  certain 
to  bring  with  it  terror,  as  it  surges  into 
dream  in  the  night,  and  the  child  jumps 
up,  awakened,  in  panic,  finding  no  one 
near  upon  whom  to  lean. 

"It  should  not  be  difficult  to  see  that 
these  *  night  terrors'  are  the  product  of  a 
suggestion  while  awake,  implicit  or  ex- 
plicit. It  should  not  be  difficult  for  those 
who  are  forewarned  to  prevent  morbid  fears 
127 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

of  this  type.  .  .  .  The  formation  of  a 
'  night  terror '  was  nipped  in  the  bud  in  the 
case  of  my  own  boy,  aged  three  and  a  half 
years.  I  shall  try  to  explain  the  method. 

"For  several  weeks  he  had  been  visiting 
the  zoological  garden  every  afternoon,  in 
the  company  of  a  French  maid  of  excep- 
tionally forceful  character  and  apparently 
free  from  the  superstitiousness  of  the  aver- 
age nurse.  For  a  long  time  all  went  well, 
until  one  evening  the  boy  began  to  cry  in  bed 
soon  after  he  was  left  for  the  night.  At  this 
unusual  occurrence  I  mounted  the  stairs 
and  inquired  the  cause  of  the  boy's  trouble. 

"He  said  there  were  lions  in  the  house, 
and  that  he  did  not  want  to  stay  alone,  as 
he  was  afraid  they  would  eat  him.  The 
source  of  the  idea  had  been  that  the  lions 
had  roared  more  loudly  than  usual  on  that 
particular  afternoon,  and  he  had  been 
much  impressed,  standing  for  some  time 
quite  motionless  before  the  cage,  though 
unterrified.  I  soon  convinced  the  boy  that 
128 


DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

the  lions  had  to  remain  in  their  cages,  and 
could  not  get  out,  hence  there  were  none 
in  the  house,  so  that  there  was  no  occasion 
for  fear.  Of  course,  it  was  first  necessary 
to  give  him  the  feeling  of  security  gained 
by  embracing  me ;  and,  secondly,  to  begin 
the  conversation  by  talking  of  something 
else  —  I  have  forgotten  what. 

"In  this  way  the  state  of  terror  was  dis- 
missed, and  the  feeling  of  protection  was 
induced  before  we  returned  to  the  subject 
of  the  lions;  then  we  made  rather  a  joke 
of  the  funny  roaring  of  the  lions  before  we 
had  finished,  and  he  finally  lay  down  with 
solemn  purpose  to  go  to  sleep  and  think, 
as  I  suggested,  of  the  tramcars  and  motors 
passing  outside  his  open  window.  It  was 
all  a  very  simple  substitution,  but  it  was 
the  prevention  of  what  might  have  become 
a  serious  fear-psychosis  if  injudiciously 
handled."1 

1  Paper  read  before  the  first  congress  of  the  American  National 
Society  for  the  Study  of  Exceptional  Children,  New  York,  April 
21,  1910. 

129 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

"Night  terrors,"  in  short,  are  usually 
the  product  of  a  faulty  upbringing.  Par- 
ents who  "frighten  children  to  make  them 
good,"  threatening  them  with  bogies, 
policemen,  or  wicked  giants,  are  seriously 
endangering  their  psychic  welfare.  The 
telling  of  ghost  stories  to  young  children 
is  a  particularly  effective  way  to  bring  on 
"night  terrors,"  and  they  have  even  been 
traced,  by  psychological  analysis,  to  the 
reading  of  fairy  tales  that  contain  grue- 
some elements.  I  recall  one  case  in  which 
a  six-year-old  boy  developed  typical  "night 
terrors"  after  listening  to  such  stories  as 
"Jack  the  Giant  Killer"  and  "The  Boy 
Who  did  not  Know  how  to  Shiver." 

The  fact  that  "night  terrors"  are  usually 
"outgrown"  by  the  eighth  or  ninth  year 
does  not  mean  that  the  ideas  responsible 
for  them  have  completely  faded  from  con- 
sciousness. On  the  contrary,  they  may 
merely  have  become  what  Freud  calls  "re- 
pressed," sinking  into  the  depths  of  the 
130 


DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

subconscious,  there  to  act  figuratively  as 
splinters  in  the  mind,  occasioning  all  sorts 
of  symptoms.  Nightmares  may  be  one 
indication  of  their  continuing  presence, 
or  may  testify  to  the  presence  of  disquiet- 
ing ideas  developed  in  an  impressionable 
person  through  the  experiences  not  of  child- 
hood but  of  later  life.  In  either  case,  the 
proper  treatment  indicated  is  not  so  much 
along  medicinal  or  dietetic  lines  as  by 
psychological  means. 

Dieting,  to  be  sure,  may  prove  extremely 
helpful,  for  the  reason  that,  as  was  stated 
on  a  previous  page,  all  dreams  require  an 
initial  physical  stimulus,  and  by  dieting 
the  victim  of  nightmare  may  diminish  the 
frequency  of  the  particular  stimulus  - 
indigestion  --  that  forms  a  starting-point 
for  his  morbid  dreams.  But  the  indiges- 
tion itself  may  be  a  product  of  his  subcon- 
scious emotional  state,  in  which  case  diet- 
ing is  not  likely  to  help  him  appreciably, 
as  he  will  then  have  indigestion  no  matter 
131 


SLEEP  AND   SLEEPLESSNESS 

what  he  eats.  On  the  other  hand,  when  the 
emotional  state  is  not  too  firmly  fixed  in 
his  subconsciousness,  dieting  may  be  of 
positive  curative  value,  through  its  "sug- 
gestive" influence  on  the  mind. 

Whether  he  diet  or  no,  there  is  one  thing 
the  sufferer  from  nightmare  should  do :  he 
should  clearly  recognize  that  his  trouble 
is  mental  rather  than  physical,  and  that  he 
helps  to  perpetuate  it  by  brooding  and 
worrying  over  it.  Years  ago,  before  medi- 
cal psychology  was  heard  of,  a  New  York 
physician  gave  nightmare  victims  an  ex- 
cellent piece  of  advice. 

"Persons  subject  to  nightmare,"  he  wrote, 
"should  so  train  the  mind  as  to  employ  the 
intellectual  faculties  systematically,  by  en- 
gaging in  some  study  requiring  their  full 
exercise.  The  action  of  the  emotions  should 
be  as  much  as  possible  controlled,  and  the 
reading  of  sensational  stories,  or  hearing 
sensational  plays,  should  be  discouraged." 

1 W.  A.  Hammond's  "Sleep  and  its  Derangements,"  pp.  190-191. 
132 


DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

If,  however,  the  cultivation  of  a  calm, 
hopeful  attitude,  and  the  occupation  of  the 
mind  with  interests  external  to  one's  self,  do 
not  suffice  to  work  a  cure,  there  is  only  one 
thing  to  be  done.  Aid  should  be  sought 
from  a  competent  neurologist,  a  physician 
trained  in  the  methods  of  psychological  anal- 
ysis, and  able  to  apply  them  to  unearth  and 
root  out  whatever  "emotional  complex"  un- 
derlies the  recurrent  nocturnal  attacks. 

"Emotional  complexes,"  again,  are 
usually  responsible  for  another,  and  some- 
times extremely  dangerous,  disorder  of 
sleep  —  somnambulism.  In  somnambu- 
lism, as  is  well  known,  a  person  while  asleep 
talks,  walks,  and  performs  all  manner  of 
complicated  acts  precisely  as  though  he 
were  awake,  but  without  the  slightest 
consciousness  of  what  he  is  doing.  Nay, 
in  many  cases  there  is  a  positive  increase 
of  his  sensory  and  motor  powers,  so  that 
he  is  able  to  do  much  that  is  quite  beyond 
him  in  the  waking  state. 
133 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

Thus,  to  give  an  instance  or  two  from 
the  many  vouched  for  by  trustworthy 
observers,  a  young  woman,  a  patient  at 
the  Birmingham  (England)  General  Hos- 
pital in  August,  1907,  sat  up  in  bed  one 
night  and  began  to  work  on  a  piece  of 
crocheting.  Her  room  at  the  time  was  so 
dark  that  her  nurse  had  to  come  close 
to  her  bed  to  see  what  she  was  doing. 
Yet  she  crocheted  rapidly  and  accurately, 
and  all  the  while  remained  in  a  deep 
sleep. 

The  nurse  now  summoned  one  of  the 
hospital  physicians,  Doctor  Hincks,  and 
together  they  watched  the  patient,  who, 
after  crocheting  some  minutes  longer,  laid 
the  fancy-work  aside,  left  her  bed,  took 
paper  and  pencil  from  a  locker,  wrote  a 
letter,  and  put  it  into  an  envelope,  which 
she  addressed  to  her  brother. 

"She  then,"  said  Doctor  Hincks,  in  re- 
porting the  affair  to  the  patient's  personal 
physician,  Doctor  J.  W.  Russell,  "took  the 
134 


DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

letter  and  walked  toward  the  door.  The 
nurse  and  I  followed  her,  but  she  took  no 
notice  of  us,  although  we  carried  a  lamp. 
As  she  was  going  out  of  the  door  I  took  her 
arm  and  led  her  back  to  bed. 

"She  came  very  quietly,  but  after  getting 
into  bed  she  became  very  excited.  After 
coming  to  herself  I  showed  her  the  letter. 
She  did  not  remember  having  written  it, 
but  recognized  the  address  as  correct  and 
the  writing  as  her  own." 

Doctor  Hincks  then  gave  her  a  piece  of 
paper  and  a  pencil  and  asked  her  to  re- 
write her  brother's  address.  At  the  same 
time  he  removed  the  lamp,  so  that  she 
would  have  no  more  light  than  when  pre- 
viously writing.  Now  she  was  able  to 
produce  only  an  illegible  scrawl,  making 
it  evident  that  during  sleep  her  eyesight 
had  been  abnormally  acute.1 

Compare   with    this,    one    of    numerous 

1  This  case  is  reported  in  detail  in  The  British  Medical  Journal, 
March  14,  1908, 

135 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

singular  episodes  in  the  career  of  a  som- 
nambulic  clergyman : 

"One  night,  in  the  middle  of  winter,  he 
dreamed  that  he  was  walking  on  the  bank 
of  a  river,  and  saw  a  child  fall  into  the 
water.  The  severity  of  the  cold  did  not 
hinder  him  from  hurrying  to  the  rescue. 
He  threw  himself  at  full  length  upon  the 
bed,  in  the  position  of  a  man  who  is  swim- 
ming, and  imitated  all  his  movements. 
After  having  fatigued  himself  for  some  time 
with  this  exercise,  he  felt  a  portion  of  the 
coverlet  gathered  in  a  heap  on  one  corner 
of  the  bed.  He  believed  this  to  be  the 
child ;  grasped  it  in  one  hand,  and  with 
the  other  went  through  the  motions  of 
swimming  back  to  the  bank  of  the  supposed 
river. 

"There  he  laid  down  his  burden,  and  came 
out,  shivering  and  chattering  his  teeth  as 
if  he  were  really  getting  out  of  an  icy  river. 
To  the  bystanders  he  said  that  he  was 
freezing,  and  would  die  of  cold,  that  his 
136 


DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

blood  was  all  turned  to  ice ;  he  must  have 
a  glass  of  brandy  to  warm  him.  Not 
having  any,  they  gave  him  some  water 
which  chanced  to  be  in  the  room ;  he  tasted 
it,  recognized  the  deception,  and  called  with 
greater  emphasis  than  before,  for  brandy, 
insisting  upon  the  magnitude  of  the  danger 
which  threatened  his  health.  A  glass  of 
liquor  was  finally  given  to  him;  he  drank 
it  with  pleasure,  and  spoke  of  the  great 
relief  which  it  afforded  him.  Notwithstand- 
ing all  these  incidents  he  did  not  wake."1 
Nocturnal  adventures  like  these  are  not 
always  so  harmless;  sometimes  the  som- 
nambulist sustains  severe  injuries  through 
a  fall,  sometimes  he  inflicts  severe,  perhaps 
fatal,  injuries  on  others.  People  in  som- 
nambulic  attacks  have  been  known  to  kill 
their  dearest  relatives,  under  a  dream-im- 
pression that  some  great  danger  was 
threatening.  In  one  case  a  Scotsman, 

XP.  M.  Simon's  "Le  Monde  des  R4ves,"  translation  by  H. 
M.  Lyman. 

137 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

Simon  Fraser,  a  resident  of  Edinburgh, 
leaped  out  of  bed,  picked  up  his  infant 
son,  asleep  in  a  crib,  and  dashed  him  to 
death  against  a  wall  of  the  room  before 
his  wife  could  interfere.  Put  on  trial  for 
murder,  Fraser  testified : 

"I  had  a  frightful  dream.  I  thought 
I  saw  a  wild  beast  come  through  the  floor 
and  spring  to  attack  the  boy.  I  thought 
I  got  to  the  crib  in  time  to  save  him  and 
kill  the  beast.  I  am  guilty  in  my  sleep, 
but  not  in  my  senses." 

These  three  instances  admirably  illus- 
trate certain  features  of  somnambulism 
which  have  led  within  recent  years  to  a 
better  understanding  of  its  nature.  It  is 
always,  as  the  second  and  third  instances 
suggest,  the  putting  of  a  dream  into  action ; 
and,  as  in  the  first  instance,  it  is  character- 
ized by  distinctive  exaltations  and  limita- 
tions of  faculty.  There  is  invariably  a 
marked  unconsciousness  for  everything  not 
directly  fitting  into  the  dream  the  somnam- 
138 


DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

bulist  is  enacting.  He  is  strangely  deaf, 
he  seems  not  to  see  other  persons  in  the 
room  with  him,  he  is  totally  unaffected 
by  stimuli  to  which  he  would  ordinarily 
react  instantly  and  vigorously. 

Now,  this  puzzling  state  is  not  only 
characteristic  of  somnambulism ;  it  is  char- 
acteristic of  a  specific  malady,  hysteria. 
Precisely  the  same  abnormal  concentration 
on  one  idea  and  oblivion  for  everything 
not  connected  with  it,  is  found  in  the  case 
of  hysterical  patients.  In  the  latter  it  is 
known  to  be  the  result  of  an  extreme  sug- 
gestibility, which  has  allowed  the  mind  to 
be  overborne  by  emotional  shocks  —  griefs, 
worries,  frights,  etc.  Further  it  is  known 
with  regard  to  hysteria  that  these  emotional 
shocks  would  not  suffice  to  provoke  dis- 
ease-symptoms, even  in  a  suggestible  mind, 
were  they  not  linked  to  previous  unpleasant 
experiences,  dating  back  perhaps  to  child- 
hood, which  have  been  as  it  were  incubating 
in  the  hysterical's  subconsciousness. 
139 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

The  same  view  is  now  held  by  the  medi- 
cal psychologist  concerning  somnambulism. 
To  him  it  is  a  species  of  hysteria,  and  is 
indicative  of  the  presence  of  disquieting 
subconscious  ideas.  Its  occurrence  in  early 
life  —  when  it  is  particularly  likely  to 
occur  —  is  regarded  by  him  as  a  real  danger- 
signal,  pointing  both  to  a  general  undue 
impressionability  and  to  specific  defects  in 
the  young  somnambulist's  upbringing  that 
have  unfavorably  influenced  the  current 
of  his  thoughts. 

Sometimes,  indeed,  somnambulism  is  fol- 
lowed by  symptoms  in  the  waking  state  of 
an  unmistakably  hysterical  character.  An 
interesting  case  in  point  is  reported  by  the 
French  medical  psychologist,  Doctor  Pierre 
Janet.  It  relates  to  a  young  girl  afflicted 
with  a  curious  and  ceaseless  turning  move- 
ment of  the  right  hand,  and  an  accom- 
panying raising  and  lowering  of  the  right 
foot. 

Her  parents  informed  the  physician  to 
140 


DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

whom  they  took  her  that  this  odd  disorder 
had  set  in  following  a  period  of  unrest  at 
night,  when  she  had  tumbled  and  tossed 
in  her  sleep  and  kept  repeating:  "I  must 
work,  I  must  work."  The  girl  herself  could 
throw  no  light  on  the  cause  of  her  malady 
and  claimed  to  be  ignorant  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  phrase,  "I  must  work."  When 
hypnotized,  however,  she  readily  re-called 
the  circumstances  under  which  she  began 
to  move  her  hand  and  foot  in  this  strange 
way. 

"My  trouble  started,"  she  said,  "after 
I  overheard  my  parents  talking  one  evening 
about  our  terrible  poverty  and  the  difficulty 
they  had  to  get  together  enough  money 
to  pay  the  quarter's  rent.  That  night  I 
dreamed  I  was  hard  at  work  at  my  regular 
trade,  trying  to  earn  as  much  as  I  could 
to  help  them.  The  next  night  I  had  the 
same  dream,  and  the  night  after  that ;  and 
I  have  been  having  it  ever  since." 

"Indeed,"  her  physician  commented. 
141 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

"And  what,  may  I  ask,  is  your  regular 
trade?" 

"I  make  dolls'  eyes." 

"That  is  certainly  a  singular  trade. 
How  do  you  make  them?" 

"With  a  lathe,  which  I  work  by  treading 
a  pedal  with  my  foot,  while  I  turn  a  wheel 
with  my  hand." 

No  more  questions  were  necessary. 
Here,  the  physician  realized,  was  a  girl 
of  sensitive  disposition,  emotional,  ner- 
vously unstable,  evidently  brought  up  in 
an  atmosphere  of  poverty,  anxiety,  and 
fear,  who  had  had  her  attention  suddenly 
and  vividly  fixed  on  the  struggles  and  self- 
denials  of  her  parents.  The  revelation 
had  been  too  much  for  her.  She  had 
shrunk  from  it,  had  sought  to  forget  it, 
and  had  actually  done  so,  as  far  as  conscious 
recollection  was  concerned. 

But  deep  down  in  her  mind  it  had  re- 
mained with  her,  to  torment  her  and  to 
dominate,  at  first  her  sleeping,  afterward 
142 


DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

her  waking  life,  finding  expression  in  the 
symbolic  movements  of  hand  and  foot. 
The  indispensable  thing,  from  the  therapeu- 
tic point  of  view,  was  to  uproot  this  "in- 
growing" memory,  to  deprive  it,  by  appro- 
priate "suggestions,"  of  its  power  to  harm ; 
and  this  was  what  her  physician  now  pro- 
ceeded to  do.1 

The  hysteria  of  the  ordinary  somnam- 
bulist is  not  so  clear-cut  as  this.  But  it 
is  equally  grounded  in  subconscious  emo- 
tional states,  and  in  its  treatment  the  aim 
must  be  to  offset  these  by  general  sugges- 
tive treatment;  or,  when  necessary,  to 
ascertain  and  allay  by  psychological  analy- 
sis the  specific  ideas  that  are  acting  as 
causal  agencies.  Dieting  and  sedatives 
may  be  of  some  help,  but  only  in  a  second- 
ary way.  The  important  thing  is  the 
"psychic  re-education"  of  the  patient,  by 
"suggestion"  and  by  the  cultivation  of 

1  This  case  is  reported  in  Doctor  Janet's  "The  Major  Symptoms 
of  Hysteria,"  pp.  127-128. 

143 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

such  traits  as  courage,  calmness,  and 
strength  of  will. 

In  this  connection,  as  in  the  case  of 
"night  terrors,"  a  great  responsibility  rests 
with  parents.  If  a  child,  as  a  regular  thing, 
begins  to  be  restless  in  his  sleep,  talks  to 
himself,  or  leaves  his  bed  and  wanders 
about  the  room  while  still  asleep,  there 
should  be  no  delay  in  endeavoring  to  dis- 
cover the  cause  of  his  uneasiness,  which 
will  usually  be  found  to  have  its  inception 
in  some  unpleasant  experience  or  experi- 
ences of  his  waking  life.  If  the  parent, 
neither  by  personal  observation  nor  by 
close  questioning  of  the  child,  can  learn 
for  himself  the  origin  of  the  somnambulism, 
his  next  and  imperative  move  should  be  to 
place  the  little  one  in  the  care  of  a  psycholog- 
ically trained  physician. 

Best  of  all,  it  goes  without  saying,  is 
for  parents,  from  the  outset  of  their  chil- 
dren's lives,  to  guard  them  as  far  as  possible 
from  undue  emotional  shocks,  while  at  the 
144 


DISORDERS  OF  SLEEP 

same  time  developing  their  will-power  and 
turning  their  thoughts  to  interests  so  ab- 
sorbing that  they  will  have  neither  time 
nor  inclination  to  become  morbidly  self- 
centered. 


145 


CHAPTER  V 

The  Causes  of  Sleeplessness 

WRITING  nearly  fifty  years  ago, 
the  New  York  neurologist,  Doc- 
tor W.  A.  Hammond,  called 
attention  to  the  prevalence  of  insomnia  as 
a  product  of  the  increasing  refinements  and 
complexities  of  civilization  and  lamented 
the  backwardness  of  mankind  in  taking 
proper  precautions  to  insure  the  regular 
functioning  of  sleep  in  the  new  conditions 
of  life.  The  inference  was  that  sleepless- 
ness is  in  most  cases  a  preventible  malady, 
and  that  almost  everybody  has  it  in  his 
power  to  determine  whether  he  shall  sleep 
well  or  badly.  Yet  the  half  century  that 
has  intervened  since  Doctor  Hammond 
wrote  has  seemingly  invalidated  this  op- 
timistic view.  Insomnia  still  is  so  much 
146 


THE  CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

in  evidence  that  a  modern  observer  can 
truthfully  declare : 

"Great  numbers  of  people  in  our  modern 
life  of  high  nervous  tension  are  victims  of 
insomnia  —  more  now  than  ever  before, 
and  the  number  is  apparently  increasing 
rapidly  in  certain  communities.  Drugs  to 
produce  sleep  were  never  in  such  demand, 
were  never  used  so  freely,  both  as  a  tem- 
porary expedient  and  as  a  daily  habit."1 

What  is  the  significance  of  this?  Does 
it  mean  that  Hammond  was  wrong,  and 
that  insomnia  is,  as  many  believe,  one  of 
the  unescapable  penalties  of  civilization? 
Or  does  it  signify  merely  that  the  world  still 
is  full  of  people  who  fail  to  observe  certain 
laws  which,  being  duly  heeded,  would  save 
them  from  recurrent  or  chronic  sleepless- 
ness ? 

Undoubtedly  the  facts  warrant  the  latter 
interpretation.  Undoubtedly,  too,  it  is  not 

1  Doctor  Norman  Bridge,  in  a  paper  read  before  the  Association 
of  American  Physicians,  Washington,  May,  1906. 

147 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

surprising  that  people  in  general  still  ignore 
the  laws  that  make  for  sound  and  refresh- 
ing sleep  and  fall  into  errors  that  bring  on 
them  the  curse  of  insomnia.  For  the  truth 
is  that  only  within  recent  years  have  the 
laws  of  sleep  and  the  causes  of  insomnia 
been  clearly  understood  even  by  medical 
men. 

Certainly  they  were  not  understood  by 
the  physicians  of  Hammond's  day,  or  by 
Hammond  himself,  as  is  evident  from  a 
perusal  of  his  book,  "Sleep  and  Its  Derange- 
ments," with  its  emphasis  on  physical  fac- 
tors in  the  causation  of  sleeplessness.  This 
same  emphasis  on  the  physical  has  been, 
until  quite  lately,  characteristic  of  all 
medical  treatises  on  the  subject.  Where- 
as, recent  investigation  has  amply  demon- 
strated, nothing  can  be  more  certain  than 
that  in  the  great  majority  of  instances 
mental  rather  than  physical  factors  are 
responsible  for  persistent  failure  in  the 
regular  functioning  of  sleep. 
148 


THE   CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

This  is  not  to  deny  that  physical  factors 
are  always  operant  in  some  degree,  and  that 
in  a  certain  proportion  of  cases  the  mental 
element  does  not  enter  at  all  as  a  causal 
agent.  Some  forms  of  brain  disease,  for 
example,  are  attended  in  their  early  stages 
by  persistent  insomnia.  Any  acute  pain 
from  local  inflammation  —  toothache,  ear- 
ache, headache,  fractures,  wounds,  rheu- 
matic pains,  etc.  —  may  be  an  efficient 
cause  of  sleeplessness.  So  may  organic 
disease  of  the  heart,  lungs,  stomach,  liver, 
and  kidneys.  Disease  of  these  organs  in- 
fluences sleep  adversely,  either  through 
causing  discomfort  or  positive  pain,  or  by 
preventing  proper  elimination  of  the  prod- 
ucts of  the  bodily  processes,  and  thus 
leaving  the  blood  charged  with  poisonous 
substances  that  irritate  the  brain  to  wake- 
fulness. 

Toxic  irritation  resulting  in  insomnia 
may  also  be  caused  by  the  action  of  various 
poisons  (lead,  arsenic,  etc.),  of  intoxicating 
149 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

liquors,  or  even  of  such  seemingly  harmless 
beverages  as  tea  and  coffee.  To  all  in- 
somniacs who  indulge  freely  in  tea  or  coffee 
I  commend  these  observations  by  one  of 
the  most  competent  present-day  authori- 
ties on  the  causes  and  treatment  of  sleep- 
lessness : 

"Every  physician  has  frequent  experi- 
ence of  people  who  complain  of  insomnia, 
yet  who  take  a  cup  of  coffee  late  at  night. 
A  large  proportion  of  humanity  cannot  do 
this  with  impunity  and  expect  to  go  to 
sleep  promptly.  Occasionally  one  finds 
that  persons  complaining  of  sleeplessness 
are  taking  three  to  five  cups  of  coffee  a 
day.  This  must  be  stopped. 

"A  physician  may  be  told  by  such  pa- 
tients that  they  cannot  get  along  without 
their  coffee.  I  have  one  answer  for  this, 
and  it  is  meant  to  show  patients  that  if 
they  want  to  sleep  they  must  take  the 
means  to  secure  it,  and,  above  all,  must 
remove  all  disturbing  factors.  I  tell  them 
150 


THE  CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

that  if  they  cannot  do  without  coffee  they 
must  continue  to  do  without  sleep.  If 
they  want  to  sleep  they  must  give  up  coffee, 
or  at  least  limit  its  amount. 

"I  have  found  it  comparatively  easy  to 
get  people  to  limit  coffee-taking  by  the  sug- 
gestion that  there  should  be  one  table- 
spoonful  of  strong  coffee  taken  to  a  cup  of 
hot  milk.  This  gives  the  taste,  or  rather 
the  aroma  of  coffee,  for  coffee  properly 
has  no  taste  to  speak  of;  and  while,  at 
first,  patients  crave  the  stimulation  they 
have  been  accustomed  to,  it  takes  but  a 
few  days  to  overcome  this  craving  entirely. 

"Usually  it  is  easy  to  get  people  to  con- 
fess that  they  are  taking  too  much  coffee. 
For  some  reason  not  easy  to  understand 
it  is  harder  to  get  them  to  acknowledge 
that  they  are  taking  too  much  tea.  Coffee 
is  taken  with  a  certain  amount  of  delibera- 
tion. Tea  may  be,  and  often  is,  taken  at 
odd  intervals  for  friendliness'  sake,  and 
sometimes  patients  do  not  know  how  much 
151 


they  are  taking.  Six  or  seven  cups  a  day 
may  be  their  usual  quota,  yet  they  do  not 
realize  it,  and  at  first  are  inclined  to  answer 
that  they  take  it  only  two  or  three  times 
a  day,  forgetting  the  little  potations  be- 
tween meals.  Tea  is  not  so  prone  to  cause 
wakefulness  as  coffee,  yet  the  toxic  irritant 
principle  in  both  is  the  same,  and  when  the 
amount  of  tea  and  its  strength  are  sufficient 
the  same  results  follow.  The  tea  habit 
must  always  be  given  up  if  there  is  com- 
plaint of  lack  of  sleep,  especially  early 
in  the  night."1 

Other  physical  factors  which  in  certain 
cases  have  a  causal  force  in  the  production 
of  chronic  sleeplessness  are  impure  air  in 
the  bedroom,  and  an  excess  of  heat  or 
cold.  There  are  some  people  who  contrive 
to  sleep  well  enough  with  their  windows 
closed  throughout  the  night,  and  their  beds 
heaped  with  many  thicknesses  of  blankets. 
But  most  of  us  need  fresh  air  by  night  as 

1  James  J.  Walsh's  "Psychotherapy,"  p.  659. 
152 


THE  CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

well  as  by  day,  and  there  are  comparatively 
few  who  sleep  really  well  if  the  bedclothes 
are  too  abundant.  On  the  other  hand,  a 
scantiness  of  coverings  may  be  equally 
fatal  to  sleep.  "Over  and  over  again," 
notes  the  observant  Doctor  Walsh,  "I 
have  found  that  patients  who  complain 
of  wakefulness,  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
night  particularly  —  that  is,  in  the  early 
morning  —  were  awakened  by  the  increas- 
ing cold  because  they  were  insufficiently 
clothed."  And  he  promptly  adds,  calling 
attention  to  another  common  physical 
cause  of  wakefulness : 

"A  large  number  of  people  have  their 
sleep  at  the  beginning  of  the  night  seriously 
disturbed  by  cold  feet.  Some  cannot  get 
to  sleep  for  an  hour  or  more,  because  their 
feet  are  cold.  If  the  patients  become 
worried  over  this  loss  of  sleep,  a  real  in- 
somnia may  develop.  It  is  for  these  people 
that  the  old-fashioned  warming-pan  was 
invented,  and  it  should  not  be  forgotten 
153 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

that  the  symptom  can  be  relieved  very 
promptly  by  means  of  a  hot-water  bag  or 
a  hot  brick  wrapped  in  flannel  at  the  foot 
of  the  bed.  An  excellent  practice  for 
very  sensitive  persons  is  to  have  the  sheets 
warmed  thoroughly  for  a  couple  of  hours 
before  bed-time.  This  is  especially  im- 
portant in  damp  weather."1 

In  this  passage  occurs  a  sentence  which 
brings  us  directly  to  the  central  fact  in 
the  whole  problem  of  insomnia,  indicating 
as  it  does  the  true  relationship  between 
the  physical  factors  above  enumerated  and 
the  supremely  important  mental  element  in 
the  making  of  most  insomniacs.  "If  the 
patients,"  says  Doctor  Walsh,  "become 
worried  over  this  loss  of  sleep,  a  real  in- 
somnia may  develop."  Applied  by  him 
to  the  wakefulness  caused  by  cold  feet,  it 
might  be  applied  with  fully  as  much  force 
to  the  wakefulness  provoked  by  almost 
any  other  physical  factor.  Without  exag- 

1  "Psychotherapy,"  pp.  656-657. 
154 


THE   CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

geration  it  may  be  affirmed  that  for  every 
case  of  insomnia  caused  directly  and  solely 
by  some  untoward  bodily  condition,  there 
are  nine  cases  in  which  bodily  conditions 
play  only  an  indirect  and  secondary  part. 
They  may  for  the  moment  exercise  an 
appreciable,  even  dominant,  influence  in 
the  disturbing  of  sleep ;  but  it  is  in  the 
mental  states  to  which  they  give  rise  that 
the  real  explanation  of  the  resultant  in- 
somnia is  to  be  sought. 

A  man  has  a  few  "bad  nights,"  caused, 
let  us  say,  by  some  digestive  disturbance, 
by  over-indulgence  in  coffee,  or  by  smoking 
a  cigar  too  many.  If  he  make  light  of  this 
loss  of  sleep,  little  harm  is  done.  His  wake- 
fulness  will  cease  troubling  him  as  soon  as  he 
takes  the  necessary  hygienic  precautions. 
But  if,  as  so  often  happens,  he  become 
alarmed  over  his  temporary  inability  to 
sleep,  not  recognizing  its  true  cause;  and 
still  more,  if  he  picture  to  himself  the  disas- 
trous results  commonly  attributed  to  in- 
155 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

somnia,  he  is  in  a  fair  way  to  make  it 
impossible  for  him  to  sleep  under  any  con- 
ditions with  soundness  and  regularity. 

"Insomnophobia,"  or  fear  of  insomnia, 
is  in  truth  one  of  the  most  frequent  causes 
of  chronic  sleeplessness.  It  is  also  one  of 
the  most  irrational  of  its  causes.  Loss  of 
sleep  is  not  in  itself  the  terrible  evil  that 
most  people  imagine  it  to  be.  For  one 
thing,  as  I  pointed  out  when  discussing 
the  nature  of  sleep,  there  are  many  persons 
who  get  along  very  well  sleeping  only  from 
four  to  five  hours  a  night.  And,  secondly, 
even  when  sleep  does  not  come,  there  are 
sure  to  be  momentary  dozings  that  have 
singularly  rest-giving  qualities. 

"But,"  some  unfortunate  insomniac  pro- 
tests, "I  never  even  doze.  I  lie  awake 
night  after  night,  the  whole  night  long." 
That  may  be  your  honest  impression ; 
nevertheless  it  is  certain  that  you  are 
mistaken.  Total  failure  to  sleep,  for  a 
period  of  only  a  few  days,  would  bring  one 
156 


THE   CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

to  the  verge  of  insanity.  Few  are  the 
cases  of  complete  insomnia  on  record,  and 
all  of  them  have  speedily  terminated  in 
death.  On  the  other  hand,  nearly  every 
insomniac  obtains  a  greater  amount  of 
real,  if  broken,  sleep  than  he  or  she  is 
aware;  or,  at  all  events,  of  the  dozing, 
borderland,  "hypnoidal"  state  midway  be- 
tween sleeping  and  waking. 

How  true  this  is,  and  how  really  restful 
the  borderland  state  may  be,  was  impres- 
sively brought  out  by  the  Patrick-Gilbert 
experiments  in  sleep,  to  which  reference 
was  made  in  the  opening  chapter.  In 
these  experiments,  it  will  be  recalled,  Pro- 
fessor Patrick  and  Doctor  Gilbert  sought 
to  ascertain  the  effects  of  protracted  loss 
of  sleep  by  keeping  three  members  of  the 
teaching  staff  of  the  University  of  Iowa 
continuously  awake  for  about  ninety  hours, 
making  physiological  and  psychological  tests 
on  them  at  intervals  of  six  hours,  in  respect 
to  motor  ability,  memory,  attention-power, 
157 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

and  so  forth.  Some  exceedingly  peculiar 
and  interesting  results  were  obtained,  not 
the  least  important  being  proof  that  at 
times  when  the  subjects  of  the  experiments 
seemed  quite  awake,  and  believed  them- 
selves to  be  awake,  they  were  in  reality 
in  a  semi-sleeping  state.  This  was  demon- 
strated by  the  nature  of  their  responses, 
some  of  which  showed  unmistakably  that 
they  had  been  dreaming. 

And  that  these  occasional  unnoticed 
lapses  from  full  wakefulness  served  well  to 
take  the  place  of  true  sleep  was  clearly  in- 
dicated by  the  ease  with  which  the  three 
subjects  recovered  from  the  severe  test 
to  which  they  had  been  put,  and  by  their 
behavior  during  the  experiments.  Only 
one  of  the  three  was  at  all  seriously  affected. 
During  the  second  night  of  the  enforced 
vigilance  he  suffered  much  from  sleepiness, 
and  complained  of  some  hallucinations  of 
sight  —  declaring  that  the  air  was  full  of 
red,  purple,  and  black  particles  like  gnats. 
158 


THE   CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

However,  these  hallucinations  entirely  dis- 
appeared after  a  sleep  of  ten  and  a  half 
hours,  when  he  awoke  feeling  quite  re- 
freshed and  as  well  as  ever.  The  next 
night  he  slept  two  hours  longer  than  was 
usual  with  him.  This  was  all  the  extra 
sleep  he  required  to  make  up  for  that  which 
he  had  lost  while  the  experiments  were  in 
progress. 

Neither  of  his  companions  experienced 
hallucinations  of  any  kind ;  and  though 
they  found  it  hard  to  keep  awake  during 
the  experiment-period,  neither  complained 
of  any  severe  suffering  or  discomfort.  After 
the  experiments  both  slept  for  about  twelve 
hours,  then  awoke  fully  refreshed.  They 
took  no  extra  sleep  the  following  night.1 

These  results,  together  with  confirmatory 
observations  reported  by  other  experiment- 
ers in  voluntary  sleeplessness,  justify  the 
statement  that  while  true  sleep  is  necessary 

1  For  a  detailed  report  of  these  experiments  see  The  Psychologi- 
cal Review,  vol.  Ill,  pp.  469-483. 

159 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

to  the  human  organism,  Nature  provides 
through  the  semi-sleeping  state  a  mechan- 
ism which,  in  nearly  every  case,  operates 
automatically  as  a  partial  substitute  for 
sleep,  to  ward  off  the  destructive  effects 
of  total  sleeplessness.  But  because  people 
generally  do  not  appreciate  this,  and  be- 
cause the  evils  of  insomnia  have  been  so 
luridly  impressed  on  the  popular  conscious- 
ness, there  is  a  tendency,  especially  among 
persons  of  the  so-called  nervous  tempera- 
ment, to  fall  into  a  panic  if  for  any  reason 
they  fail  for  a  few  successive  nights  to 
sleep  with  their  wonted  soundness. 

From  this  sentiment  of  fear,  this  anxious 
dread  lest  they  become  victims  of  the  demon 
insomnia,  it  is  an  easy  step  to  the  develop- 
ment of  a  "fixed  idea,"  conscious  or  sub- 
conscious, that  they  cannot  possibly  sleep 
as  well  as  they  used  to  do.  This  idea  is 
naturally  intensified  by  the  fact  that, 
simply  because  they  try  desperately  to  fall 
asleep,  they  maintain  a  strained,  tense 
160 


THE   CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

state  of  the  attention  that  is  in  itself  fatal 
to  sleep.  Thus  they  "prove,"  to  their 
increasing  dismay,  that  insomnia  veritably 
has  them  in  its  clutch,  and  accordingly 
they  become  more  and  more  obsessed  with 
the  delusion  that  sleep  will  henceforth  be 
impossible  to  them.  Actually,  their  per- 
sistent wakefulness  is  due  to  nothing  but 
their  faulty  state  of  mind. 

Sometimes,  again,  insomnia  originates  not 
from  fear  of  sleeplessness  but  from  fear  of 
sleep  —  or,  to  be  exact,  from  fear  of  the 
dreams  that  may  come  during  sleep.  Suf- 
ferers from  nightmare  have  been  known  to 
cultivate  a  wakefulness  that  develops  into 
an  obstinate  case  of  insomnia.  Any  terri- 
fying recurrent  dream,  in  fact,  may  act  as 
an  efficient  cause  of  insomnia  in  supersen- 
sitive  persons,  as  is  indicated  by  a  strange 
case  coming  under  the  observation  of 
Doctor  Pierre  Janet. 

The  patient  in  this  case,  when  first  seen 
by  Janet,  claimed  that  she  had  not  slept 
161 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

for  two  years,  despite  incessant  resort  to 
drugs.  Watching  her  carefully  for  several 
nights,  Janet  himself  felt  inclined  to  credit 
her  statement,  so  far  as  true  sleep  was  con- 
cerned. But  he  noticed  she  would  fre- 
quently lapse  into  the  drowsy,  dozing, 
"hypnoidal"  condition  that,  as  was  just 
said,  serves  on  occasion  as  a  sleep-substitute. 

Janet  also  noticed,  however,  that  she 
never  remained  in  this  condition  more  than 
a  few  moments  at  a  time,  and  always 
passed  from  it  into  complete  wakefulness 
with  a  start  of  terror.  One  day,  after 
she  had  become  drowsy,  he  asked  her : 

"Is  there  anything  that  troubles  you  so 
that  you  cannot  go  to  sleep?" 

"Yes,  yes,"  she  eagerly  answered.  "It 
is  my  child  —  it  is  the  face  of  my  dead 
child.  I  always  see  it  in  my  sleep  —  always 
—  and  it  terrifies  me." 

The  next  instant  she  was  wide  awake. 
In  answer  to  the  questions  Janet  now  put 
to  her,  she  told  him  that  shortly  after  the 
162 


THE   CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

death  of  her  child  she  had  had  a  bad  attack 
of  typhoid  fever,  and  during  convalescence 
had  been  greatly  troubled  by  visions  of 
her  lost  little  one  as  it  looked  in  its  last 
moments.  It  was  immediately  after  this 
that  her  insomnia  developed,  the  result, 
as  Doctor  Janet  felt  certain  —  and  as  the 
outcome  of  his  psychotherapeutic  treat- 
ment verified  —  of  the  formation  of  a 
"fixed  idea"  that  if  she  went  to  sleep  she 
would  unfailingly  have  the  same  distress- 
ing dream.1 

For  that  matter,  any  sudden  emotional 
shock  may  be  a  cause  of  insomnia.  In 
his  book  "Abnormal  Psychology,"  Doctor 
I.  H.  Coriat  cites  the  case  of  a  patient  who 
became  greatly  frightened  by  an  insane 
woman  entering  her  store  and  throwing 
an  entire  box  of  lighted  matches  among 
some  paper.  A  week  later  the  patient, 
previously  a  sound  sleeper,  developed  an 

1  For  details  of  this  case  see  Pierre  Janet's  "  Ntvroses  et  Idiet 
Fixes"  vol.  I,  pp.  354-374. 

163 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

insomnia  which  continued  for  five  years 
up  to  the  time  she  came  under  neurologi- 
cal observation.  What  happened  in  her 
case  probably  was  that,  brooding  over  this 
alarming  incident,  she  had  lain  awake  a 
few  nights  thinking  of  it,  and  had  then 
begun  to  fret  not  so  much  about  it  as 
about  the  sleeplessness  it  had  occasioned. 
Thence,  all  unconsciously,  she  allowed  her 
mind  to  become  obsessed  with  the  idea 
that  sleep  had  deserted  her  forever. 

Worry  over  anything,  indeed,  is  likely  to 
form  the  starting-point  for  an  insomnia 
habit;  and  modern  authorities  are  coming 
more  and  more  to  the  belief  that  worry  is 
more  frequently  responsible  than  any  other 
single  cause  for  occasional  and  chronic 
sleeplessness.  In  most  cases,  too,  the  worry 
provocative  of  sleeplessness  is  concerned 
not  with  physical  but  with  psychic  ills ; 
so  that  it  is  possible  to  add  that  the  man 
who  takes  his  daily  cares  to  bed  with  him 
is  pre-eminently  the  man  who  cannot  sleep. 
164 


THE   CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

With  lamentable  ease  he  may  fall  into  the 
plight  vividly  described  by  the  distinguished 
English  physician,  Sir  James  Sawyer,  in  one 
of  his  clinical  lectures  : 

"Our  patient  may  be  a  young  profes- 
sional man.  He  has  commenced  practice, 
or  rather  to  wait  for  practice,  as  a  barrister, 
a  solicitor,  a  physician,  or  a  surgeon.  He 
begins  to  find  that  causes  or  cases  have  not 
been  waiting  for  his  advent ;  clients  or  pa- 
tients are  *  few  and  far  between.'  For  a  time 
he  manfully  struggles  on,  his  hope  and  his 
health  sustaining  him;  but  these  at  last 
yield  under  the  continued  pressure  of  new 
disappointments  and  accumulating  anxieties. 

"He  may  want  money;  his  friends  will 
give  it  to  him  readily  if  he  will  ask  for  it, 
but  his  pride  prevents  him.  It  is  not  a 
gift  or  a  loan  he  needs ;  he  does  not  want 
to  beg  or  to  borrow  money,  he  yearns  to 
earn  it.  And  while  he  has  been  hoping 
and  waiting,  and  growing  sick  with  the  fail- 
ure of  his  expectations,  he  has  been  work- 
165 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

ing  early  and  late  in  his  exhausting  studies 
—  perhaps  straining  his  powers  in  prepara- 
tion for  some  higher  examination,  and,  it 
may  be,  withal,  adding  the  denial  of  due 
sleep  and  exercise,  and  so  he  has  been 
wasting  and  wearing  his  psychical  and 
physical  energies  in  the  trust  that  he  might 
thus  so  skill  himself  the  more  as  to  secure 
the  longed-for  practice. 

"At  last  he  has  fairly  broken  down.  He 
has  grown  thinner ;  he  looks  haggard ;  he 
is  filled  with  groundless  fears ;  he  is  weighed 
down  with  the  ineffable  misery  of  insomnia ; 
he  has  headache  constantly,  and  noises  in 
his  ears ;  he  thinks  his  memory  is  failing ; 
he  is  dull  and  listless ;  he  has  been  lying 
awake  for  hours  after  going  to  bed,  or, 
waking  in  the  'small  hours,'  he  has  been 
unable  to  sleep  again,  and  when  he  has  slept 
he  has  had  horrid  dreams;  and  he  comes 
to  us  for  help  because  he  can  scarcely  sleep 
at  all,  and  he  is  possessed  by  the  fear  that 
he  is  going  mad. 

166 


THE   CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

"His  misery  is  urgent ;  it  is  the  unspeak- 
able misery  of  intrinsic  insomnia."1 

Every  physician  is  familiar  with  cases 
closely  paralleling  this  one,  and  of  them  all 
it  may  truly  be  said :  "Worry  did  it." 
One  physician,  Doctor  C.  W.  Saleeby,  has 
termed  worry  "the  disease  of  the  age," 
and  assuredly  he  finds  some  warrant  for 
this  bold  generalization  in  the  enormous 
number  of  cases  of  insomnia  that  may  def- 
initely be  traced  to  worry.  It  is  important 
to  add  that  worry  does  not  cause  insomnia 
merely  by  reason  of  its  disturbing  influence 
on  the  mind ;  it  may  act  through  the  pro- 
duction of  physical  disorders  which  are 
themselves  potent  sleep-breakers,  and  which 
would  have  been  non-existent  but  for  their 
victim's  worrying  habits. 

In  a  general  way,  of  course,  it  has  long 
been  known  that  all  depressing  emotions 
have  an  unfavorable  effect  on  the  bodily 

1  Lecture  delivered  at  The  Queen's  Hospital,  Birmingham, 
England,  1900. 

167 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

processes ;  but  until  the  past  few  years 
little  effort  has  been  made  to  ascertain 
with  precision  their  specific  effects.  A 
number  of  exhaustive  investigations,  how- 
ever, have  now  been  carried  out  with  this 
end  in  view,  and  with  most  informing 
results.  Perhaps  most  important  in  the 
present  connection  is  the  light  which  these 
researches  have  thrown  on  the  harmful 
consequences  to  the  digestive  and  nutri- 
tional processes  caused  by  such  states  as 
anger,  fear,  and  worry. 

Experimenting  both  on  animals  and  on 
human  beings  in  whom  disease  had  caused 
openings  in  the  body  sufficient  to  permit 
study  of  its  inner  workings,  it  was  found 
that  whereas  gastric  secretion  was  pro- 
moted by  pleasurable  emotions  it  was  hin- 
dered, or  entirely  stopped,  by  unpleasant 
ones.  Even  the  showing  of  food  to  a  hun- 
gry dog  was  sufficient  to  start  a  lively  flow 
of  gastric  juice.  But  the  arousing  of  any 
Disturbing  emotional  state  brought  an  al- 
168 


THE   CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

together  different  reaction.  To  quote  from 
an  excellent  summary  of  the  results  of  the 
various  experiments,  made  public  by  one 
of  the  experimenters,  Professor  W.  B. 
Cannon,  of  Harvard  University : 

"Not  only  is  it  true  that  normal  secre- 
tion is  favored  by  pleasurable  sensations 
.  .  .  but  also  that  unpleasant  feelings, 
such  as  vexation  and  some  of  the  major 
emotions,  are  accompanied  by  a  failure 
of  secretion.  Thus  Hornborg  was  unable 
to  confirm  in  his  patient  the  observation 
of  Pawlow  that  mere  sight  of  food  to  a 
hungry  subject  causes  the  flow  of  gastric 
juice.  Hornborg  explains  the  difference 
between  his  and  Pawlow's  results  by  the 
difference  in  the  reaction  of  the  subjects 
to  the  situation.  When  food  was  shown 
but  withheld,  Pawlow's  hungry  dogs  were 
all  eagerness  to  secure  it,  and  the  juice 
began  to  flow  at  once.  Hornborg's  little 
boy,  on  the  contrary,  became  vexed  when 
he  could  not  eat  at  once,  and  began  to  cry ; 
169 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

then  no  secretion  appeared.  Bogen  also 
reports  that  his  patient,  a  child,  aged  three 
and  a  half  years,  sometimes  fell  into  such 
a  passion  in  consequence  of  vain  hoping 
for  food,  that  the  giving  of  the  food,  after 
calming  the  child,  was  not  followed  by  any 
secretion  of  the  gastric  juice. 

"The  observations  of  Bickel  and  Sasaki 
confirm  and  define  more  precisely  the 
inhibitory  effects  of  violent  emotion  on 
gastric  secretion.  They  studied  these  ef- 
fects on  a  dog  with  an  cesophageal  fistula 
and  with  a  side  pouch  of  the  stomach 
which,  according  to  Pawlow's  method, 
opened  only  to  the  exterior.  .  .  .  [One 
day]  a  cat  was  brought  into  the  presence 
of  the  dog,  whereupon  the  dog  flew  into  a 
great  fury.  The  cat  was  then  removed, 
and  the  dog  pacified.  Now  the  dog  was 
[fed]  for  five  minutes.  In  spite  of  the 
fact  that  the  animal  was  hungry  and  ate 
eagerly,  there  was  no  secretion  worthy  of 
mention.  During  a  period  of  twenty  min- 
170 


THE  CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

utes  .  .  .  only  9  c.c.  of  acid  fluid  was  pro- 
duced, and  this  was  rich  in  mucus.  It  is 
evident  that  in  the  dog,  as  in  the  boy  ob- 
served by  Bogen,  strong  emotions  can  so 
profoundly  disarrange  the  mechanisms  of 
secretion  that  the  natural  nervous  agitation 
accompanying  the  taking  of  food  cannot 
cause  the  normal  flow. 

"On  another  occasion  Bickel  and  Sasaki 
started  gastric  secretion  in  the  dog  by 
sham  feeding,  and  when  the  flow  of  gastric 
juice  had  reached  a  certain  height  the  dog 
was  infuriated  for  five  minutes  by  the 
presence  of  the  cat.  During  the  next 
fifteen  minutes  there  appeared  only  a  few 
drops  of  a  very  mucous  secretion.  Evi- 
dently in  this  instance  a  physiological  pro- 
cess, started  as  an  accompaniment  of  a 
psychic  state  quietly  pleasurable  in  charac- 
ter, was  almost  entirely  stopped  by  another 
psychic  state  violent  in  character. 

"It  is  noteworthy  that  in  both  the  posi- 
tive and  negative  results  of  the  emotional 
171 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

excitement  illustrated  in  Bickel  and  Sasaki's 
dog  the  effects  persisted  long  after  the  re- 
moval of  the  exciting  condition.  This  fact 
Bickel  was  able  to  confirm  in  a  girl  with 
oesophageal  and  gastric  fistulas ;  the  gas- 
tric secretion  long  outlasted  the  period  of 
eating,  although  no  food  entered  the 
stomach.  The  importance  of  these  obser- 
vations to  personal  economies  is  too  ob- 
vious to  require  elaboration. 

"Not  only  are  the  secreting  activities~of 
the  stomach  unfavorably  affected  by  strong 
emotions ;  the  movements  of  the  stomach 
as  well,  and,  indeed,  the  movements  of 
almost  the  entire  alimentary  canal,  are 
wholly  stopped  during  excitement."1 

Such  findings  leave  no  room  for  doubt 
that  chronic  indigestion  and  similar  ills 
may  be,  and  often  are,  caused  in  perfectly 
healthy  individuals  by  persistent  indul- 
gence in  the  disturbing  emotional  state 

1  W.  B.  Cannon,  in  American  Journal  of  the  Medical  Sciencea, 
April,  1909. 

172 


THE   CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

represented  by  worry.  But  these  physical 
troubles  are  among  the  well-recognized 
causes  of  insomnia,  and  consequently  when- 
ever they  are  due  to  worry  it  is  really  the 
worry  that  is  responsible  for  the  resultant 
sleeplessness.  This  fact  has  to  be  kept  in 
mind  when  it  is  a  question  of  treating  any 
given  case  of  insomnia  complicated  by 
physical  troubles  which  are  demonstrably 
not  based  in  true  disease  of  the  bodily 
organs. 

Further,  it  is  equally  true  that  under 
certain  conditions  pleasurable  as  well  as 
unpleasant  emotions  may  interfere  with 
sleep.  In  my  opening  chapter  I  laid  stress 
on  the  fact  that  interest  —  which  usually 
is  wholly  pleasurable  —  seems  to  possess 
the  peculiar  quality  of  enabling  one  to  get 
along  very  well  with  less  than  the  average 
amount  of  sleep.  That  it  does  so  would 
appear  to  be  due  to  the  fact  that  though 
the  keenly  interested  man  may  devote 
fewer  hours  to  sleep,  he  sleeps  more  "in- 
173 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

tensely"  than  his  less  interested  fellow. 
Consciously  or  unconsciously,  that  is  to 
say,  he  has  cultivated  a  sleep  habit  which 
compensates  qualitatively  for  what  is  lack- 
ing quantitatively. 

But,  now,  suppose  that  a  person  who  has 
not  habituated  himself  to  a  short  sleeping- 
period,  and  lacks  the  short-sleeper's  ability 
to  "close  up  shop"  mentally  the  moment 
his  head  touches  the  pillow,  happens  to 
become  unusually  interested  in  something 
during  the  evening  hours.  Is  it  not  reason- 
able to  expect  that  this  exceptional  interest 
will  make  for  wakefulness,  and  that  by  the 
time  he  goes  to  bed  he  will  be  so  excited 
mentally  that  he  will  find  it  difficult  to 
sleep?  This  is  exactly  what  does  occur, 
particularly  in  the  case  of  people  of  an 
"emotional"  temperament. 

An  evening  at  the  theatre  or  opera,  if 

one  is  not  a  regular  attendant  at  theatre 

or  opera,  or  is  unduly  susceptible  to  the 

emotional  appeal  of  the  play  or  the  music, 

174 


THE  CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

may  mean  a  sleepless  night.  The  same 
result  may  follow  an  evening  spent  in  read- 
ing a  too  exciting  novel ;  or  in  engaging  in 
any  discussion  that  works  the  mind  up  to 
a  high  pitch.  In  short,  mental  excitement 
of  any  sort  is  a  detriment  to  sleep,  and  is 
recognized  as  such  by  all  competent  physi- 
cians. Almost  everybody,  therefore,  could 
profit  from  this  bit  of  advice  addressed 
more  particularly  to  "nervous  patients" 
by  Doctor  Oppenheim,  of  Berlin : 

"A  great  deal  depends  upon  the  right 
use  of  the  evening  hours.  On  no  account 
let  yourself  occupy  them  with  anxious 
forebodings  about  the  night.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  is  not  wise  to  take  up  your 
mind  with  too  exciting  thoughts,  as  the 
strong  after-impression  of  feeling  and  fancy 
may  counteract  the  tendency  to  sleep. 
You  must  find  out  for  yourself  whether  a 
quiet  game  (cards,  halma,  chess,  or  pa- 
tience) ,  the  reading  of  a  serious  or  an  amus- 
ing book,  the  perusal  of  an  illustrated 
175 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

paper,  or  a  chat  with  a  friend  will  be  most 
certain  to  give  you  that  tranquillity  of 
mind  through  the  vestibule  of  which  you 
will  pass  into  the  temple  of  sleep." 

Still,  as  in  sleeplessness  caused  by  tem- 
porary physical  disturbances,  little  harm 
is  done  by  the  occasional  loss  of  a  night's 
rest  as  a  result  of  mental  excitement,  pro- 
vided there  be  no  great  fuming  and  fretting 
over  the  inability  to  sleep.  It  cannot  be 
too  often  or  too  strongly  said  that  it  is 
here  the  real  danger  lies.  Fuming  and 
fretting,  and  above  all  dreading  lest  the 
wakefulness  become  habitual,  are  the  surest 
ways  to  make  it  habitual.  For  they  lead 
to  the  conviction  that  one  cannot  sleep, 
and  when  one  has  come  to  this  belief  then 
indeed  sleep  is  effectually  banished. 

To  sum  up :  There  are  many  causes  for 
insomnia,  some  physical,  some  psychical. 
It  is  only  in  a  comparatively  few  cases 
that  the  cause  is  wholly  physical.  In 
most  cases  the  physical  factors  are  second - 
176 


THE  CAUSES  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

ary  to  the  psychical,  so  far  as  true  causation 
is  concerned.  In  many  cases  the  physical 
factors  are  themselves  created  by  the  psy- 
chical. So  that  it  is  entirely  true  to  say 
of  the  average  insomniac  that  the  real 
trouble  with  him  is  nothing  more  than  a 
bad  habit  of  mind. 


177 


CHAPTER  VI 
The  Treatment  of  Sleeplessness 

FROM  the  foregoing  it  should  be 
evident  that  any  treatment  of  in- 
somnia which  places  its  main  re- 
liance in  the  use  of  drugs  is  foredoomed 
to  failure.  Some  students  of  the  insomnia 
problem  would  go  even  further,  and  say 
that,  so  far  as  regards  the  actual  cure  of 
sleeplessness,  drugs  used  specifically  for 
that  purpose  always  do  more  harm  than 
good.  At  all  events,  it  is  the  consensus 
of  the  most  authoritative  opinion  that 
drugs  should  be  used  only  when  it  is  indis- 
pensable to  bring  about  immediate  uncon- 
sciousness as  a  relief  from  physical  pain  or 
the  shock  of  some  great  bereavement. 

This  of  itself  suggests  one  of  the  great 
shortcomings  of  the  so-called  "narcotics," 
178 


THE  TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

or  "sleeping-drugs."  What  they  produce 
is  always  unconsciousness,  not  natural  sleep, 
an  altogether  different  matter.  "The  ef- 
fect of  narcotics,"  Marie  de  Manacei'ne 
pointed  out  nearly  twenty  years  ago,  "only 
resembles  sleep  by  producing  a  temporary 
interruption  of  consciousness.  At  this  point 
the  resemblance  ceases."  More  elabo- 
rately, Mortimer-Granville,  writing  still 
earlier,  specifies : 

"It  should  be  remembered  that  these 
remedies  are  capable  of  destroying  life, 
and  it  is  only  by  the  exercise  of  their  poi- 
sonous properties  in  a  low  degree  that  they 
produce  the  results  for  which  they  are 
given.  The  action  is  destructive  to  life, 
and  the  only  reason  they  do  not  kill  is  that 
we  do  not  take  enough  of  them.  The  state 
they  produce  is  not  sleep,  but  a  condition  of 
narcotism  that  counterfeits  sleep.  When 
a  man  says:  'I  want  a  quiet  night;  I  will 
take  a  sleeping-draught,'  he  speaks  in 
parables.  To  express  the  fact  plainly,  he 
179 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

should  say:  'I  want  a  quiet  night;  I 
cannot  obtain  it  by  going  to  sleep,  or  I  am 
afraid  to  trust  to  the  chances  of  natural 
rest,  so  I  will  poison  myself  a  little,  just 
enough  to  make  me  unconscious,  or  slightly 
paralyze  my  nerve  centres,  not  enough  to 
kill.'"1 

To  be  sure,  it  often  happens  that  a  drug- 
induced  unconsciousness  passes  over  into  a 
state  of  natural  sleep ;  and  this  fact  is 
responsible  for  the  recklessness  with  which 
many  physicians  still  prescribe  drugs  to 
patients  who  complain  of  inability  to  sleep. 
But  it  also  happens  that  once  the  practice 
of  taking  drugs  is  started,  there  is  a  grad- 
ually increasing  tendency  to  resort  to  them 
at  the  least  sign  of  wakefulness,  until  at 
last  the  insomnia  habit  is  replaced  by  a 
still  more  disastrous  drug  habit.  Indeed, 
to  be  quite  accurate,  the  drug  habit  is 
superimposed  on  the  insomnia  habit;  for 
it  is  a  matter  of  common  observation  that, 

1  J.  Mortimer-Granville's  "Sleep  and  Sleeplessness,"  pp.  29-30. 
180 


THE   TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

in  the  course  of  time,  those  addicted  to 
the  use  of  narcotics  find  it  increasingly 
difficult  to  go  to  sleep,  despite  a  steady 
increase  in  the  quantity  of  the  drug  daily 
taken  by  them. 

It  is  a  lamentably  frequent  experience 
both  of  specialists  and  of  general  practi- 
tioners, to  have  patients  come  to  them 
with  the  agonizing  plea : 

"For  God's  sake,  doctor,  show  me  how 
to  sleep.  I  have  drugged  myself  nearly 
to  death,  but  I  am  no  better  off  than  I 
was  before.  Indeed,  I  am  worse  off,  as  I 
have  reached  a  point  where  I  cannot  sleep 
without  a  drug,  and  even  with  one  I  sleep 
badly.  You  must  do  something  for  me, 
and  do  it  without  delay." 

Accordingly,  among  present-day  leaders 
in  the  medical  profession,  few  will  be  found 
dissenting  from  the  view  recently  set  forth 
in  one  of  the  most  important  medical  peri- 
odicals in  this  country  by  Doctor  Arthur 
S.  Risser: 

181 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

"My  watchword  is  'Avoid  narcotics!' 
...  If  drugs  are  deemed  necessary,  their 
suggestive  action  must  be  made  use  of  to 
enhance  and  to  prolong  their  effects.  But 
drugs  are  only  palliative.  They  cannot 
cure.  They  should  never  be  used  for  any 
length  of  time,  and  as  it  is  especially  diffi- 
cult to  prevent  these  patients  from  becom- 
ing drug  habitues,  it  is  usually  wiser  to 
dispense  entirely  with  their  use."1 

But  if  narcotics  are  to  be  dispensed  with, 
how,  then,  should  one  proceed  in  the  treat- 
ment of  chronic  sleeplessness  ?  The  answer 
is,  for  the  vast  majority  of  insomniacs, 
by  psychological  rather  than  medicinal 
methods,  plus  the  enforcement  of  certain 
hygienic  and  dietetic  precautions.  Medic- 
inal treatment,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is 
imperative  only  when  the  insomnia  is  found 
to  be  primarily  due  to  diseased  bodily 
conditions  that  require  medicine  for  their 
cure  or  amelioration.  In  all  other  cases, 

1  New  York  Medical  Journal,  vol.  XCVIII,  p.  872. 
182 


THE   TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

since  the  sleeplessness  is  really  symptomatic 
of  a  wrong  mental  attitude,  the  essential 
thing  is  to  develop  a  new  and  healthier 
frame  of  mind.  This  can  be  done  in  only 
one  way --through  some  form  of  "treat- 
ment by  suggestion." 

The  great  need,  of  course,  is  to  break 
down  the  insomniac's  "fixed  idea"  that  he 
cannot  sleep.  In  many  cases  this  may  be 
done  by  the  simple  process  of  hypnotizing 
him,  impressing  upon  him  during  hypnosis 
the  suggestion  :  "To-night  you  are  going  to 
sleep  soundly,"  and  allowing  the  automatic 
execution  of  this  post-hypnotic  command 
to  demonstrate  to  him  the  groundlessness  of 
his  belief  that  sleep  is  beyond  his  power. 
Recent  medical  literature  abounds  in  in- 
stances in  which  this  easy  procedure  has 
resulted  in  curing  more  or  less  protracted  in- 
somnia. Here  a  single  illustrative  case  must 
suffice,  reported  by  Doctor  Frederic  H.  Ger- 
rish,  of  Portland,  Maine,  a  former  president 
of  the  American  Therapeutic  Society : 
183 


SLEEP  AND   SLEEPLESSNESS 

"A  great  affliction,  prolonged  overwork, 
and  anxiety  had  so  affected  a  man  of  thirty- 
five  years  that  his  capacity  for  sleep  was 
seriously  reduced.  For  three  months  he 
had  slept  only  two  or  three  hours  in  the 
twenty -four,  and  not  only  felt  ill,  but 
looked  haggard  and  worn.  A  single  hyp- 
notic treatment  refreshed  him  greatly.  He 
was  instructed  to  come  daily  for  a  while, 
as  the  case  was  chronic  and  severe;  but 
a  month  went  by  without  my  seeing  him. 
Then  at  a  chance  meeting  he  was  asked  to 
give  an  account  of  himself  -  -  why  he  had 
not  come  oftener,  as  he  had  promised.  He 
joyously  replied :  '  What's  the  use  of  going 
to  a  doctor  when  one  is  perfectly  well?  I 
slept  like  a  log  all  that  night,  and  I've  slept 
like  a  log  every  night  since.'  Many  years 
have  passed,  and  he  has  had  no  recurrence 
of  insomnia."1 

Similar    results,    though    by    no    means 

1  From  a  paper  read  by  Doctor  Gerrish  at  the  May,  1909, 
meeting  of  the  American  Therapeutic  Society. 

184 


THE  TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

always  achieved  so  rapidly,  are  reported 
by  hypnotism-using  physicians  in  all  lands. 
Also,  however,  these  physicians  find  them- 
selves obliged  to  report  that  hypnotism  is 
far  from  being  a  specific  for  insomnia.  For 
one  thing,  a  certain  proportion  of  patients 
prove  to  be  unhypnotizable ;  and  even 
among  those  easily  hypnotized  there  are 
not  a  few  in  whom  the  post-hypnotic 
command  to  sleep  fails  to  take  effect. 
Moreover,  most  insomniacs  entertain  a 
stubborn  prejudice  against  hypnotism,  be- 
lieving, though  without  real  warrant,  that 
it  "is  weakening  to  their  will-power"  and 
"places  them  at  the  mercy  of  the  hypno- 
tist." Finally,  although  cures  by  hypno- 
tism may  be,  and  usually  are,  lasting,  there 
is  no  guarantee  that  they  will  be ;  for  the 
mere  command  to  sleep  does  not  enlighten 
the  patient  as  to  the  factors  which  have 
operated  to  prevent  him  from  sleeping; 
and,  lacking  this  enlightenment,  he  may 
in  time  relapse  into  insomnia. 
185 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

For  these  reasons,  although  hypnotism 
probably  and  rightly  will  always  be  utilized 
as  a  therapeutic  agent  in  the  treatment  of 
sleeplessness,  there  is  a  growing  tendency 
among  those  who  specialize  in  this  field, 
to  attack  insomnia  by  employing  suggestion 
not  in  the  hypnotic  but  in  the  waking  state. 
Incredible  as  it  may  seem,  there  are  many 
insomniacs  to  whom  sleep  comes  without 
any  difficulty  after  the  practitioner  has 
merely  assured  them,  authoritatively  and 
with  honest  conviction,  that  they  can  and 
will  sleep.  They  accept  and  act  on  this 
suggestion  with  as  much  readiness  as  though 
it  were  imparted  to  them  during  hypnosis. 

In  one  striking  case,  treated  by  Doctor 
James  F.  Fisher,  Professor  of  Nervous  and 
Mental  Diseases,  College  of  Physicians  and 
Surgeons,  Los  Angeles,  California,  the 
patient  was  a  retired  army  officer,  who  had 
been  suffering  from  insomnia  for  years. 
His  wife  told  Doctor  Fisher  that  he  "had 
taken  tons  of  hypnotics  and  had  tried 
186 


THE  TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

everything,  but  was  only  getting  worse 
and  becoming  a  physical  wreck."  He  took 
dram  doses  of  sulphonal,  and  even  then 
did  not  obtain  more  than  three  hours' 
sleep.  Nevertheless  in  less  than  five  weeks 
Doctor  Fisher  had  him  sleeping  eight  hours 
a  night. 

"For  ten  days,"  Doctor  Fisher  states, 
"his  only  treatment  consisted  in  daily 
visits  to  my  office,  where  he  was  assured 
that  each  night  he  would  sleep  better  than 
the  night  before,  and  would  soon  be  able 
to  return  to  his  home.  My  instructions 
were  to  go  to  bed  at  nine  o'clock,  to  shut 
the  eyes,  and  to  play  he  was  asleep,  and 
though  he  felt  wide-awake  to  lie  perfectly 
still  by  force  of  will-power.  Each  day  or 
two  he  admitted  that  he  was  getting  con- 
trol over  his  insomnia."1 

Experience  has  taught,  however,  that  in 
many  cases  it  is  desirable,  not  simply  to 
assure  the  patient  that  he  can  sleep,  but 

1  Journal  of  the  American  Medical  Association,  1906. 
187 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

to  prove  it  to  him  by  actually  putting  him 
to  sleep.  This  is  one  of  the  great  values 
of  hypnotism  as  a  curative  agent  in  in- 
somnia, for  it  is  essentially  a  process  of 
putting  to  sleep.  But  if  the  patient  can- 
not or  will  not  be  hypnotized,  or  if  for  any 
reason  the  use  of  hypnotism  in  his  case  is 
not  deemed  advisable,  there  is  now  available 
another  process  which  attains  the  desired 
end.  It  consists  in  impressing  on  the 
patient  strongly  the  idea  that  he  can  sleep, 
while  at  the  same  time  subjecting  him  to 
the  conditions  requisite  to  bring  on  the 
hypnoidal,  or  semi-sleeping  state.  This 
may  best  be  done  by  employing  the  method 
devised  by  Doctor  Sidis,  as  quoted  by  me 
on  a  previous  page.  Let  me,  for  conven- 
ience' sake,  describe  it  again  in  Doctor 
Sidis 's  words : 

"The  patient  is  asked  to  close  his  eyes 

and    keep   as   quiet   as   possible,    without, 

however,  making  any  special  effort  to  put 

himself  in  such  a  state.    He  is  then  asked 

188 


THE  TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

to  attend  to  some  stimulus,  such  as  reading 
or  singing,  or  to  the  monotonous  beats  of 
a  metronome.  Or  he  may  be  asked  to 
fixate  his  attention  on  some  object,  while 
at  the  same  time  listening  to  the  beats  of 
the  metronome.  His  eyes  are  then  closed, 
he  is  to  keep  very  quiet,  while  the 
metronome  or  some  other  monotonous 
stimulus  is  continued." 

In  effect,  what  happens  under  these 
conditions  is  not  only  that  the  patient  be- 
comes drowsy,  but  that  his  suggestibility 
is  greatly  increased ;  so  that  even  if  he 
does  not  automatically  pass  from  the  semi- 
sleeping  state  thus  induced  into  a  state 
of  deep  sleep,  he  is  pretty  sure  to  do  so  in 
response  to  the  suggestions  of  the  practi- 
tioner. This  is  the  experience  of  all  who 
make  use  of  Doctor  Sidis's  method. 

It  has  been  used  on  a  particularly  wide 

scale,  and  with  most  beneficial  results,  at  the 

medical  clinic  connected   with   Emmanuel 

Church  in  Boston.    The  director  of  this 

189 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

clinic,  Doctor  Samuel  McComb,  assures 
me  that  this  method  practically  never  fails 
to  induce  sound  sleep  in  the  patients  to 
whom  he  applies  it.  This  even  when  they 
come  to  him  expressing  absolute  skepticism 
in  the  possibility  of  their  obtaining  sleep 
by  any  means. 

Rather  more  than  a  year  ago,  for  example, 
there  appeared  at  the  clinic  a  young  woman, 
an  artist,  who  complained  that  for  upward 
of  six  months  she  had  scarcely  slept.  So 
far  as  she  could  tell  there  was  no  ascertain - 
able  cause  for  her  sleeplessness.  She  had 
consulted  several  physicians,  all  of  whom 
had  pronounced  her  free  of  any  organic 
disease  that  might  have  insomnia  as  one 
of  its  symptoms ;  she  had  suffered  no  severe 
shock,  and  she  had  nothing  particular 
about  which  to  worry.  Nevertheless,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  she  had  made  liberal 
use  of  drugs,  she  could  not  sleep  as  she  had 
formerly  been  able  to  do. 

Questioned  closely  she  recalled  that  her 
190 


THE  TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

sleeplessness  had  begun  after  a  somewhat 
strenuous  working-period.  It  further  ap- 
peared that  she  was  of  an  intensely  active 
mentality,  and  was  forever  thinking  about 
her  work,  in  the  evenings  as  well  as  in  the 
daytime,  and  even  after  she  had  gone  to 
bed.  Realizing  that  this  chronic  state  of 
mental  tension  was  enough  to  account  for 
the  inability  to  sleep,  Doctor  McComb 
had  no  hesitation  in  saying  to  her : 

"Your  insomnia  can  be  cured,  I  can 
promise  you  that.  In  fact,  you  are  going 
to  fall  asleep  within  the  next  few  minutes." 

"How  absurd,"  was  her  incredulous  ex- 
clamation. "I  know  I  am  going  to  do 
nothing  of  the  sort." 

Doctor  McComb  pointed  to  a  deep,  com- 
fortable arm-chair. 

"You  see  that  chair  ?  "  he  asked.  " There 
is  nothing  magical  about  it,  yet  it  is  a 
strange  thing  that  every  sufferer  from 
insomnia  who  has  sat  in  that  chair  has 
enjoyed  refreshing  sleep  before  leaving  it. 
191 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

You  may  be  the  first  one  not  to  do  so.  I 
do  not  know.  But  if  you  are  I  shall  be 
very  much  surprised,  and  shall  look  upon 
you  as  indeed  a  curiosity.  Please  sit  in  it, 
and  let  us  see  what  will  happen." 

Once  she  was  in  the  chair  he  started  a 
metronome  ticking,  bade  her  close  her  eyes 
and  sit  quietly,  and  exhorted  her  to  think 
of  nothing  in  particular.  These  instructions 
given,  he  began  talking  to  her  in  a  low 
voice,  assuring  her  of  the  certainty  that 
she  would  fall  asleep,  and  of  her  ability 
to  sleep  well  at  night  in  the  future.  Within 
ten  minutes  she  really  was  asleep,  and  con- 
tinued sleeping  for  half  an  hour.  When 
she  at  last  awoke  it  was  to  sit  up  in  the 
chair,  with  the  astonished  cry : 

"Why,  I  have  been  asleep !  This  is  the 
most  remarkable  thing  that  ever  happened 
to  me.  I  truly  thought  I  could  never 
sleep  again." 

"On  the  contrary,"  Doctor  McComb  told 
her,  "you  are  going  to  enjoy  regular  sleep 
192 


THE  TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

from  now  on,  and  without  any  effort  to 
gain  it.  One  trouble  with  you  is  that  you 
have  been  trying  for  sleep  too  hard,  and 
without  the  knowledge  of  the  conditions 
requisite  to  sleep.  But  all  that  will  be 
changed  now." 

Returning  the  next  day,  the  young 
woman  informed  him  that  she  had  had  her 
first  night's  rest  since  her  insomnia  began. 
After  one  or  two  additional  treatments  by 
suggestion,  with  explanation  of  the  nature 
and  laws  of  sleep,  she  ceased  coming  to 
him,  because,  as  she  stated  when  he  chanced 
to  meet  her  six  months  later,  she  was  "com- 
pletely cured." 

Here,  then,  in  hypnotic  suggestion,  in 
suggestion  directly  given  in  the  fully  waking 
state,  and  in  suggestion  administered  during 
the  hypnoidal  condition,  we  have  three 
efficacious  modes  of  attacking  all  insomnia 
not  connected  with  true  organic  disease. 
To  insure  their  success,  however,  after- 
treatment  is  of  the  utmost  importance. 
193 


SLEEP  AND   SLEEPLESSNESS 

This  does  not  necessarily  mean  a  long 
course  of  visits  to  the  practitioner's  office. 
What  it  does  mean  is  that  the  patisnt  must 
be  instructed  in  and  persuaded  to  apply 
to  himself,  the  general  principles  governing 
sleep  and  any  special  precautionary  meas- 
ures indicated  in  his  particular  case. 

In  other  words,  whoever  undertakes  to 
treat  insomnia  should  study  each  case 
individually,  no  matter  what  method  of 
treatment  by  suggestion  he  may  employ 
to  demonstrate  that  the  ability  to  sleep 
is  not  wholly  lost.  This  for  the  reason 
that  no  case  of  insomnia  is  precisely  like 
any  other  case.  The  preoccupations  that 
may  weigh  on  a  patient's  mind  to  disturb 
his  sleep  are  innumerable;  the  dietetic  or 
hygienic  indiscretions  that  contribute  to 
the  formation  of  a  bad  sleep  habit  are  like- 
wise endless.  Yet  it  is  necessary  for  the 
conscientious  physician  to  seek  these  out, 
in  order  that  he  may  be  in  a  position  to 
remove  any  specific  cause  of  wakefulness. 
194 


His  patient  may  be  one  of  those  persons 
so  constituted  that  tea  or  coffee  has  a 
peculiarly  toxic,  irritant  effect  on  him ; 
or  he  may  be  excessively  addicted  to  the 
use  of  alcohol  or  tobacco,  also  detrimental 
to  the  sleep  of  some  people.  In  this  event, 
total  or  partial  abstinence  must  be  en- 
joined. The  patient,  again,  may  be  par- 
taking overfreely  of  certain  foods  not  easily 
digested  by  everybody  —  as  pastry,  fried 
foods,  etc. ;  or  he  may  be  underfeeding,  a 
mistake  equally  serious.  In  this  connec- 
tion an  observation  by  Doctor  Walsh  is 
much  to  the  point : 

"There  is  a  very  common  persuasion 
that  the  eating  of  food  in  any  quantity 
shortly  before  going  to  bed,  and  especially 
the  eating  of  certain  materials,  will  keep 
people  awake.  It  is  well  known,  however, 
that  there  are  a  great  many  people  who 
can  eat  anything  and  sleep  well  after  it, 
and  young  children  sleep  best  when  their 
stomachs  are  full.  There  are  undoubtedly 
195 


SLEEP  AND   SLEEPLESSNESS 

idiosyncrasies  in  this  matter  that  must  be 
respected,  but  many  patients  are  deceiving 
themselves.  They  are  eating  too  little, 
and  their  wakefulness  is  more  due  to  the 
mental  state  than  to  anything  else. 

"As  this  contradicts  a  very  prevalent  im- 
pression, I  may  say  that  it  is  said  deliber- 
ately and  only  after  much  experience  with 
people  inclined  to  be  oversolicitous  about 
their  diet  and  their  health  generally,  and 
who  were  actually  producing  wakefulness 
—  or  at  least  very  light,  dreamful  sleep  — 
by  their  elimination  from  their  diet,  and 
especially  from  their  evening  meal,  of  many 
nutritious  substances.  I  make  it  a  rule 
to  insist  with  patients  that  if  it  is  more 
than  five  hours  since  their  last  meal  they 
must  take  a  glass  of  milk  and  some  crackers, 
or  a  cup  of  cocoa  and  something  to  eat  before 
going  to  bed.  This  is  particularly  impor- 
tant if  they  have  been  out  in  the  air  much 
between  their  last  meal  and  bedtime.'*1 

1  "Psychotherapy,"  p.  659. 
196 


THE   TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

And  of  special  interest  to  a  numerous 
class  of  insomniacs  is  Doctor  Walsh's 
additional  statement : 

"With  regard  to  the  disturbance  of  sleep 
in  the  early  morning  hours  there  are  cer- 
tain instructions  to  patients  that  have 
always  seemed  to  me  extremely  important. 
Most  of  the  patients  who  complain  of  wake- 
fulness  in  the  early  morning  hours  are  really 
suffering  from  hunger  at  that  time.  This 
is  especially  true  with  regard  to  those 
who  stay  up  rather  late  at  night.  They 
have  their  last  regular  meal  about  seven  or 
a  little  earlier,  they  get  to  bed  at  eleven  or 
even  later,  and  some  of  them,  following  the 
old  maxim  that  eating  before  sleep  is  likely 
to  disturb  it,  go  to  bed  on  an  empty 
stomach.  Whenever  more  than  four  hours 
have  passed  since  the  last  meal  the  stomach 
is  quite  empty,  and  after  the  preliminary 
fatigue  has  worn  off  and  the  sleep  has  be- 
come lighter  and  the  lack  of  nourishment 
more  pronounced,  a  vague  sense  of  discom- 
197 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

fort  in  the  abdominal  region  wakes  them, 
though  most  of  them  do  not  realize  that 
they  are  disturbed  by  a  craving  for  food. 
In  a  large  number  of  these  cases  I  have 
found  that  the  recommendation  of  a  glass 
of  milk  and  some  crackers,  or  some  simple 
cake,  just  before  retiring  does  more  than 
anything  else  to  lengthen  sleep  and  prevent 
what  has  been  learnedly  called  matucinal 
vigilance."1 

On  the  other  hand,  as  Doctor  Paul 
Dubois  has  pointed  out,  in  his  excellent 
work,  "The  Psychic  Treatment  of  Nervous 
Disorders,"  the  patient  must  not  allow  this 
or  any  similar  expedient  to  become  a  fetish 
with  him.  "It  is  sometimes  good,"  Doctor 
Dubois  comments,  "when  insomnia  is  great- 
ly prolonged,  or  when,  on  coming  out  of  a 
nightmare,  one  cannot  get  hold  of  one's  self, 
to  get  up  for  a  moment  and  drink  a  glass 
of  cold  water  and  turn  on  the  light;  but 
one  must  avoid  having  recourse  to  these 

1  "Psychotherapy,"  p.  662. 
198 


THE  TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

measures  too  often,  for  one  becomes  a 
slave  to  them.  I  have  seen  patients  obliged 
to  have  recourse  to  them  continually. 
Some  can  never  go  to  sleep  unless  they 
keep  their  night-light  burning.  Others  can- 
not get  along  without  their  glass  of  water 
or  glass  of  milk.  .  .  .  These  patients  are 
not  cured  of  their  insomnia ;  their  prep- 
arations are  subterfuges,  useful  if  they 
are  employed  occasionally,  but  always 
troublesome  if  they  become  habitual." 

This  warning  applies  even  to  such  salu- 
tary measures  as  the  taking  of  a  warm 
bath,  or  the  warming  of  the  bed  with  a 
hot-water  bag,  in  the  case  of  persons  kept 
awake  by  cold  feet.  It  does  not  apply, 
however,  to  hygienic  precautions  necessary 
to  the  general  health  as  well  as  helpful  in 
the  treatment  of  insomnia.  It  is  not  a 
question  of  becoming  a  slave  to  a  habit 
in  taking  pains,  for  instance,  to  have  the 
bedroom  well  ventilated,  and  the  bed- 
coverings  proportionate  to  the  atmosphere 
199 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

of  the  room.  Of  course,  exposure  to 
draughts  should  be  avoided,  especially  as 
the  skin  during  sleep,  in  consequence  of 
increased  perspiration,  is  very  sensitive  to 
cold,  and  one  is  more  easily  chilled  asleep 
than  awake.  Besides,  any  current  of  air 
blowing  across  the  face  is  of  itself  likely 
to  cause  wakefulness,  even  from  a  sound 
sleep.  But  danger  from  this  source  can 
be  readily  avoided,  either  by  screens,  or 
by  the  use  of  some  device  fitting  into  the 
window-frame  and  shutting  off  any  direct 
air-current  while  permitting  ample  venti- 
lation. 

As  to  the  proper  temperature  of  the 
room  during  sleep,  most  persons  get  along 
best  in  a  room  not  wanner  than  60° 
Fahrenheit.  For  children  below  the  age 
of  four  or  five,  a  higher  temperature  is 
advisable.  Marie  de  Manacei'ne  recom- 
mends 75°  Fahrenheit  during  the  first  days 
after  birth ;  74°  to  72°  Fahrenheit  at  the 
end  of  the  first  month  ;  70°  to  68°  Fahren- 
200 


THE  TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

heit  at  the  end  of  the  second  month ;  66° 
to  64°  Fahrenheit  at  the  end  of  the  first 
year;  and  64°  to  60°  Fahrenheit  in  the 
fourth  year. 

Nor  does  Doctor  Dubois's  warning  apply 
to  the  self-utilization  of  the  hypnoidal 
method  of  inducing  sleep,  for  the  excellent 
reason  that  this  method  tends  of  itself  to 
form  a  sleep  habit  which  makes  its  con- 
tinued employment  unnecessary.  Indeed, 
among  the  various  auxiliaries  in  the  con- 
quest of  insomnia  —  and  in  its  prevention 
—  I  know  none  which  is  more  strongly  to 
be  recommended.  Its  value  lies  in  the 
fact  that  when  its  basic  conditions  are 
complied  with,  it  always  "works,"  and  it 
is  so  simple  it  can  be  used  by  anybody. 

In  making  use  of  it  after  one  has  gone 
to  bed,  a  soft-ticking  clock,  a  watch,  any- 
thing that  produces  a  monotonous  sound 
may  be  used  instead  of  the  metronome 
commonly  employed  by  the  specialists.  A 
comfortable  position  should  be  chosen, 
201 


SLEEP  AND   SLEEPLESSNESS 

and  —  this  is  most  important  —  the  posi- 
tion having  once  been  chosen,  there  should 
afterward  be  absolutely  no  shifting  about 
in  bed.  Arms  and  legs,  hands  and  feet, 
all  must  be  kept  motionless.  And  keep 
the  eyes  closed. 

Soon,  if  these  directions  are  faithfully 
observed,  you  will  pass  into  the  sleep- 
waking  state.  The  "tic-tac,  tic-tac"  of 
the  clock,  watch,  or  metronome  will  sound 
strangely  faint  and  remote  to  you.  Next 
moment  you  may  hear  it  distinctly  again. 
Do  not  let  this  trouble  you.  The  sleep- 
waking  state  is  one  of  continual  fluctuation 
between  sleep  and  wakefulness. 

Continue  to  lie  quiet,  to  keep  your  mind 
passive.  Again  the  "tic-tac,  tic-tac"  will 
sound  remote  to  you ;  again  you  will  hear 
it  with  almost  irritating  distinctness.  Re- 
main motionless.  Presently  you  will  hear 
it  no  more,  for  you  will  be  asleep. 

Or,  if  you  are  a  person  supersensitive  to 
noise,  you  may  with  equal  success  employ, 
202 


THE  TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

not  an  auditory,  but  a  visual  stimulus. 
This  is  the  method  I  prefer,  and  I  find  it 
of  unfailing  helpfulness.  In  applying  it, 
after  you  have  assumed  a  comfortable 
position,  remain  perfectly  motionless  as 
before,  and  select  some  spot  on  the  bedroom 
wall  —  any  fragmentary  image  which,  by 
reason  of  a  ray  of  light  from  the  moon  or 
other  outside  illuminant,  stands  out  from  the 
rest  of  the  surroundings  with  special  dis- 
tinctness. Fix  your  gaze  on  this  spot, 
not  intently  or  with  any  straining  of  the 
attention,  but  with  the  eyes  half  open,  in 
such  a  way  that  the  spot  appears  to  be  far 
away  and  indistinct. 

If  you  do  this,  if  you  lie  perfectly  still, 
and  if  you  allow  your  mind  to  think  only 
of  the  spot  at  which  you  are  looking,  your 
eyes  will  soon  grow  heavy  and  will  close. 
The  effort  should  then  be  made  to  open 
them  and  again  gaze  at  the  spot  on  the 
wall.  Presently  they  will  again  close  of 
themselves,  and  in  a  short  time  it  will  be 
203 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

found  impossible  to  open  them,  for  you  will 
no  longer  be  awake. 

Should  the  room  be  in  absolute  darkness, 
the  same  result  may  be  obtained  by  visual- 
izing to  yourself  some  small  object  —  a 
key,  a  bunch  of  grapes,  a  book,  anything 
that  comes  into  your  mind  —  and  by  gazing 
at  this  imaginary  object  precisely  as  you 
would  gaze  at  something  real.  Observe, 
however,  that  in  employing  this  hypnoidal 
method  it  should  not  be  used  with  the 
deliberate  effort  of  "trying  to  go  to  sleep." 
To  try  to  go  to  sleep  is  to  prevent  sleep 
from  coming  to  you,  for  it  means  a 
maintenance  of  mental  tension,  and  tension 
is  the  great  foe  of  sleep.  Consequently 
it  is  a  salutary  practice  to  cultivate  the 
habit  of  both  mental  and  physical  relaxa- 
tion at  occasional  intervals  during  the  day. 
Let  everything  go  for  a  few  minutes; 
talk  of  nothing;  think  of  nothing;  do 
absolutely  nothing;  just  close  your  eyes 
and  rest. 

204 


THE  TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

But  this  is  exactly  what  the  insomniac 
finds  it  hardest  to  do ;  and  because  of  his 
characteristic  restlessness  and  uneasiness 
it  usually  is  difficult  indeed  for  him  to 
apply  the  hypnoidal  method  effectively  to 
his  own  case.  The  physician  must  recog- 
nize this ;  must  appreciate  that  neither 
self-employment  of  the  hypnoidal  method 
nor  the  taking  of  hygienic  and  dietetic 
precautions  will  be  of  much  avail,  so  long 
as  the  patient  is  handicapped  by  a  faulty 
mental  attitude.  His  mind  must  be 
changed  before  he  can  be  cured.  This  is 
the  absolutely  imperative  thing. 

To  effect  the  change,  as  indicated  by 
the  instances  cited  above,  a  single  hypnotic 
or  hypnoidal  treatment  will  sometimes 
suffice.  At  the  opposite  extreme,  it  some- 
times is  necessary  to  call  in  the  services 
of  the  skilled  medical  psychologist.  The 
patient's  mental  preoccupation  may  not 
be  with  any  conscious  fear  or  dread,  anxiety 
or  grief.  He  may  be  tortured  by  some 
205 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

"subconscious  complex,"  some  "forgotten 
memory,"  requiring  deft  psychological 
analysis  for  its  recall  and  its  dislodgment. 
More  often,  fortunately,  simple  persuasion 
will  prove  enough.  And  once  it  has  been 
demonstrated  to  the  patient,  through 
hypnosis,  hypnoidization,  or  direct  sug- 
gestion in  the  waking  state,  that  he  still 
can  sleep,  he  will  usually  listen  to,  and  be 
profoundly  influenced  by,  the  practitioner's 
sage  counsel. 

Impress  on  him  at  the  outset  the  supreme 
importance  of  banishing  worry  from  his 
life,  and  in  especial  of  henceforth  never 
worrying  about  inability  to  sleep,  should 
sleep  occasionally  be  denied  him.  Point  out 
to  him  the  little  damage  that  in  itself  loss  of 
sleep  really  involves.  Reiterate  that  it  is 
always  the  worry  that  harms  and  kills. 
Call  his  attention,  by  illustrative  anecdote, 
to  the  many  dire  effects  that  follow  in 
worry's  train,  and  the  marvelous  possibilities 
of  self -cure  through  mastery  over  worry, 
206 


THE  TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

Here  is  one  little  tale  from  real  life  that 
you  may  find  helpful  to  relate  to  your 
patient.  It  is  an  experience  in  the  career 
of  that  pioneer  psychotherapist  Doctor 
Dubois.  To  Doctor  Dubois  there  came 
one  day  a  man  about  forty  years  old,  of 
powerful  build,  tall  and  military-looking. 
His  appearance  corresponded  with  his  pro- 
fession, for  he  was,  he  explained,  an  officer 
in  the  regular  army. 

"But  I  very  much  fear,"  he  added, 
"that  unless  you  can  do  something  for 
me,  I  shall  have  to  resign  my  commission. 
Frankly,  I  have  not  the  least  idea  what  is 
the  matter  with  me,  and  our  surgeon  con- 
fesses his  inability  to  help  me.  He  has 
given  me  a  thorough  overhauling  and  pro- 
nounces me  organically  sound.  But  I  am 
far  from  well. 

"I  am  tired  all  the  time.     Any  sustained 

exertion  uses  me  up  completely.      I  cannot 

sleep,  and  when  I  do  happen  to  doze  off, 

I  waken  suddenly,  a  prey  to  an  unknown 

207 


SLEEP  AND   SLEEPLESSNESS 

terror,  my  heart  palpitating,  my  body 
drenched  in  perspiration.  I  have  frequent 
headaches,  with  a  sensation  of  gimlets 
boring  into  my  temples.  My  back  aches 
a  good  deal,  and  my  legs  trouble  me  also." 

Re-examined  physically  by  Doctor 
Dubois,  the  verdict  of  the  army  surgeon 
was  confirmed.  Nevertheless,  the  haggard, 
worn  expression  of  the  face,  the  bad  color 
of  the  skin,  the  tremor  of  the  hands,  sug- 
gested that  the  patient  was  really  in  a  se- 
rious condition.  On  Doctor  Dubois's  ad- 
vice he  secured  an  immediate  leave  of 
absence,  and  for  two  months  took  a  "rest 
cure"  treatment. 

At  the  end  of  that  time  he  was  so  im- 
proved in  health  that  he  was  anxious  to 
go  back  to  his  duties.  Doctor  Dubois 
consented,  on  one  condition. 

"You  are  a  queer  fellow,"  said  he. 
"Here  you  have  been  steadily  improving, 
but  I  notice  that  I  had  to  drag  out  of  you 
by  direct  questioning  the  admission  that 

208 


THE  TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

any  specific  symptom  was  abated.  If  I 
had  not  asked  you,  we  should  have  gone 
on  talking  about  the  weather. 

"Do  you  know  what  that  means?  It 
means  that  you  are  not  disposed  to  notice 
the  pleasant  things  in  life,  and  are  disposed 
to  look  on  the  dark  side.  With  this  ten- 
dency you  can  make  yourself  sick  every 
night,  for  every  day  things  are  certain  to 
occur  that  will  annoy  and  upset  you. 

"At  present  you  are  cured,  but  if  you 
are  to  stay  cured  you  must  change  your 
point  of  view.  You  can  do  it  easily  enough. 
This  is  what  you  must  promise  me.  Every 
night,  before  you  go  to  bed,  sum  up  your 
day.  Think  of  the  things  that  have  trou- 
bled you;  then  think  of  the  things  that 
have  been  favorable  to  you,  and  I  believe 
the  beam  will  tip  more  often  to  this  side. 

"The   ills   from   which   you   have   been 
suffering  are  due  to  one  thing  only  —  that 
you  have  had  a  false  philosophy  of  life. 
Change  that,  and  you  will  stay  well." 
209 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

Six  months  later  Doctor  Dubois  received 
a  photograph  showing  this  officer  on  horse- 
back, leaping  over  a  high  barrier.  The 
photograph  had  written  on  it:  "As  well 
in  the  moral  saddle  as  in  the  physical." 
Six  years  after  this,  physician  and  patient 
happened  to  meet  again.  Said  the  latter : 

''Thanks  to  you,  doctor,  I  now  am  always 
well.  I  seem  to  bear  a  charmed  life.  I 
have  my  motto:  'Don't  worry  —  do  your 
duty,  come  what  may.'  It  has  kept  me  in 
good  health,  and  it  certainly  has  not  hurt 
my  advancement,  for  you  behold  me  lieuten- 
ant-colonel." 

If  you  are  sure  that  your  patient  does  not 
belong  to  the  class  of  organically  diseased 
insomniacs  —  who  form  an  exceedingly 
small  percentage  of  the  whole  —  you  can 
honestly  tell  him  that  his  plight  is  no 
worse  than,  if  as  bad  as,  this  officer's  was, 
and  that  he  can  cure  himself  in  the  same 
way.  Make  it  very  clear  to  him  that  the 
certainty  of  his  cure  depends  chiefly  on  his 
210 


THE   TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

own  efforts,  and  most  of  all  on  his  ability 
to  throw  off  the  special  worries  and  obses- 
sions that  beset  him.  To  help  him  attain 
the  needed  placidity  of  mind,  to  help  him 
"get  away  from  himself,"  you  may,  if 
you  please,  encourage  him  in  taking  up 
some  interesting  hobby.  The  "hobby 
cure"  is  now  a  recognized  form  of  treat- 
ment for  nervous  patients  —  and  you  may 
feel  sure  that  your  insomniac  is  a  nervous 
patient.  Also,  it  certainly  will  do  no  harm 
to  advise  him  to  seek  the  strength  that 
comes  from  sincere  religious  faith  and  from 
prayer. 

Do  not  smile  at  this  suggestion.  That 
prayer  has  a  true  therapeutic  value  is  the 
belief  not  of  "religious  healers"  only,  but 
of  foremost  scientific  and  medical  authori- 
ties. William  James,  the  greatest  psy- 
chologist that  America  has  yet  produced, 
has  declared  unreservedly  that  if  any 
medical  fact  can  be  considered  established, 
it  is  that  prayer  may  often  contribute  to 
211 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

restoration  to  health,  and  should  be  en- 
couraged as  a  therapeutic  measure.  Doctor 
Richard  C.  Cabot,  of  the  Harvard  Medical 
School,  has  expressed  the  same  view,  adding 
that  any  man  who  prays  sincerely  will 
thereby  open  to  himself  powers  which  he 
might  otherwise  never  be  able  to  draw 
upon. 

Indeed,  at  least  one  physician  of  note, 
Doctor  Thomas  Hyslop,  the  English  psy- 
chiatrist, specifically  recommends  prayer 
in  the  treatment  of  insomnia.  In  an  ad- 
dress delivered  before  the  British  Medical 
Association,  Doctor  Hyslop,  speaking  from 
the  experience  of  many  years,  affirmed 
that  he  knew  nothing  so  well  calculated 
as  prayer  to  pacify  the  mind  and  nerves, 
and  bring  about  the  mental  passivity  in- 
dispensable to  the  return  of  regular,  natural 
sleep.  By  this,  of  course,  Doctor  Hyslop 
meant  true  prayer,  the  kind  of  prayer  that 
Jonathan  Edwards  had  in  mind  when  he 
wrote : 

212 


THE  TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

"Resolved,  never  to  count  that  a  prayer, 
nor  to  let  that  pass  as  a  prayer,  nor  that  as 
a  petition  of  a  prayer,  which  is  so  made 
that  I  cannot  hope  the  Lord  will  answer  it." 

By  way  of  recapitulation,  these  are  the 
facts  which,  in  the  light  of  recent  clinical 
and  experimental  research,  I  would  most 
strongly  impress  on  all  who  would  under- 
take the  treatment  of  insomnia,  or  are 
themselves  insomniacs : 

That  nearly  all  insomnia  is  curable,  but 
that  it  is  useless  to  try  to  cure  any  kind 
of  insomnia  by  the  administration  of  the 
so-called  sleep-producing  drugs. 

That  the  only  justification  for  the  em- 
ployment of  these  drugs  is  in  cases  where 
it  is  indispensable  to  cause  immediate 
unconsciousness. 

That  the  proper  treatment  for  ninety  to 
ninety-five  per  cent  of  insomnia  is  by  psy- 
chological means  alone,  or  psychological 
means  plus  hygienic  and  dietetic  modifica- 
tions of  the  daily  life. 
213 


SLEEP  AND  SLEEPLESSNESS 

That  since  in  most  cases  the  persistence 
of  insomnia  is  due  to  a  false  idea  that  one 
cannot  sleep,  the  first  effort  should  be  to 
disprove  this  idea  by  putting  the  patient 
to  sleep  through  hypnosis,  hypnoidization, 
or  suggestion  in  the  fully  waking  state. 

That  in  many  cases  the  successful  ac- 
complishment of  this  first  effort  results  in 
a  complete  and  lasting  cure. 

But  that,  in  order  to  be  on  the  safe  side, 
it  is  well  to  undertake  a  thorough  "re- 
education" of  the  patient;  pointing  out 
to  him  the  pitfalls  he  must  avoid ;  enjoin- 
ing any  dietetic  or  hygienic  precautions 
that  may  seem  to  be  specially  called  for 
in  his  case;  and,  above  all,  instructing 
him  in  the  principles  of  right  thinking. 

And,  finally,  that  if  he  fail  to  respond  to 
this  treatment,  and  if  he  be  proved  free 
from  organic  complications  that  might 
account  for  a  continuance  of  his  insomnia, 
there  is  reason  for  suspecting  the  presence 
of  a  "subconscious  complex,"  ascertain- 
214 


THE  TREATMENT  OF  SLEEPLESSNESS 

ment  of  which   by  psychological   analysis 
will  pave  the  way  for  his  complete  cure. 

Almost  always,  in  fine,  there  is  hope  for 
the  insomniac.  Almost  always  his  is  a 
distinctly  curable  malady.  And  almost 
always,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  cure  rests 
with  himself.  Depending  as  his  sleepless- 
ness usually  does  on  a  state  of  mind,  it  is 
at  bottom  a  question  of  inducing  him  to 
substitute  a  new  and  healthier  mental 
state. 


THE    END 


215 


INDEX 


BRIDGE,  N.,  147  n. 

CABOT,  R.  C.,  212. 
Cahill,  B.  J.  S.,  73-75. 
Cannon,    W.    B.,    169-172 

and  n. 

Claperede,  E.,  9-10. 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  67. 
Conley,  E.,  83,  107. 
Coriat,  I.  H.,  21  and  n. 

DIETING,  and  nightmares, 
120-121,  131-132;  and 
somnambulism,  143 ;  and 
sleeplessness,  149-152, 
195-199. 

Dreams,  recurrent,  37-38, 
51-53 ;  reasoning  in,  41 ; 
imagination  in,  41-44, 
67-75;  rapidity  of,  44- 
46 ;  experimental  pro- 
duction, 47 ;  of  flying, 
48-50 ;  physical  factors 
in,  48-52;  and  disease, 
51-53;  analysis  of,  50- 
65,  98-99,  103-113;  of 
lost  articles,  75-84 ;  and 
ghosts,  83-89 ;  premoni- 
tory, 91-95. 


Dubois,  P.,  on  sleeplessness, 
198-199,  201 ;  and  psychic 
re-education,  207-210. 

ELLIS,  H.,  on  dreams  of 
flying,  48-50  ;  and  Freu- 
dian theory,  62;  also 
mentioned,  40,  41. 

Emotions,  and  bodily  pro- 
cesses, 167-172. 

FISHER,  J.  F.,  186-187. 

Freud,  S.,  theory  of  dreams, 
60-62  and  n ;  also  men- 
tioned, 40,  124,  130. 

GALEN,  22. 

Gerrish,  F.  H.,  183-184  and 

n. 
Gilbert,  J.  A.,  experiments 

of,  30-31,  157-159  and  n. 
Goodrich-Freer,  Miss,  100- 

103,  106. 
Greenwood,  F.,  94,  110. 

HAMMOND,  W.  A.,  on  night- 
mares, 132  and  n;  on 
insomnia,  146,  148;  also 
mentioned,  3,  22,  147. 


217 


INDEX 


Hauser,  C.,  24-26. 

Hilprecht,  H.  V.,  68-72,  83, 
105. 

Hobby  cure,  211. 

Holt,  H.,  108  n. 

Hypnoidization,  description 
of,  11-12;  and  sleepless- 
ness, 188-193,  201-205. 

Hypnotism,  and  sleepless- 
ness, 183-186,  188,  193, 
214. 

Hyslop,  T.,  212. 

INSOMNIA.  See  SLEEPLESS- 
NESS. 

JAMES,  W.,  77,  211. 
Janet,  P.,  40,  140,  143  n, 

161-163. 
Jastrow,  J.,  56. 
Jefferson,  T.,  24. 
Jones,  F.,  120-123. 
Jones,  F.  J.,  72. 

LYMAN,  H.,  124-125. 

MANACEINE,  M.  DE,  on  na- 
ture of  sleep,  3 ;  on  exces- 
sive sleep,  31-32 ;  on 
sleeping-drugs,  179 ;  on 
bedroom  temperature, 
200-201. 

Maury,  A.,  44-45. 

McComb,  S.,  190-193. 

Monotony,  central  fact  in 
sleep,  19-20. 


Mortimer-Gran  ville,  J.,  179, 
180  and  n. 

NIGHTMARE,  description, 
115-120;  treatment,  120, 
131-133 ;  causes,  121- 
124. 

Night  terrors,  description, 
124-125 ;  causes,  125- 
130;  prevention,  130. 

PATRICK,  G.  T.  W.,  experi- 
ments of,  30-31,  157-159 
and  n. 

Perception,  subconscious, 
99-104. 

Prayer,  211-213. 

Prince,  M.,  40,  62. 

RICHARD,  ABBE,  22. 
Risser,  A.  S.,  181-182. 
Royce,  J.,  80,  82,  107. 

SALEEBY,  C.  W.,  167. 

Sawyer,  J.,  165-167  and  n. 

Schuyler,  M.,  75. 

Sidgwick,  E.,  86,  103. 

Sidgwick,  H.,  86. 

Sidis,  B.,  theory  of  sleep, 
9-10 ;  and  hypnoidiza- 
tion,  11-12, 188-189;  ex- 
periments in  sleep,  12- 
19;  and  Freudian  the- 
ory, 62. 

Sleep,  theories  of,  3-4, 8-10, 
19-23 ;  anomalies  of, 


218 


INDEX 


6-7;  borderland  of,  12, 
157-160;  experimental 
studies,  12-21 ;  of  child- 
hood, 18-19,  23-27;  in- 
terest and,  27-30,  173- 
176 ;  time  needed  for,  30, 
33-36 ;  best  temperature 
for,  200-201. 

Sleeplessness,  physical 

causes,  148-155,  173, 
176 ;  mental  causes,  154- 
156,  160-167,  172-177; 
drugs  and,  178-182 ; 
treatment  by  hypnotism, 
183-186;  treatment  by 
waking  suggestion,  186- 
187 ;  treatment  by  hyp- 
noidization,  188-193 ;  ed- 
ucative treatment,  206- 
211;  prayer  and,  211- 
213. 

Somnambulism,  character- 
istics of,  133,  138-139; 
instances,  134-138;  hys- 


teria and,  139-143 ;  treat- 
ment, 143-144. 

Squires,  J.  L.,  77-80,  107. 

Stevenson,  R.  L.,  67,  104. 

Stewart,  D.,  24. 

Subconscious,  character- 
istics of  the,  99-105. 

TARTINI,  G.,  67,  104. 
VmcHow,  R.,  27-29. 

WALSH,  J.  J.,  on  Virchow's 
case,  27-29;  on  sleep- 
lessness, 150-152,  153- 
154,  195-198. 

Warburton,  Canon,  85, 
112. 

Williams,  T.  A.,  126-129 
and  n. 

Worry,  154-156,  164-168, 
175-176. 

Z.,  MBS.,  92,  95,  109. 


219 


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